The Women: A Novel Part 5

There was a burst of excitement, men squaring their hats and running for their cars, Wallace sliding into the front seat with the photographer and Myra lifting herself ponderously up across the running board and into the back, doors slamming, dust rising, a man's voice echoing behind them-Hey, wait for me!-and they were off. Miriam held fast to the door handle, barking directions at the back of Wallace's head. The green fields rushed past the window. The air was in her face. She was filled with a fierce joy, the joy of combat, of movement and action, her only thought to seize the initiative, catch Frank unawares, bring him to his knees. But when they arrived at the back entrance five minutes later, she had her second surprise: Frank had blocked the road with one of the farm trucks and there were three more men, men she didn't recognize, standing before it with their caps pulled low and their arms crossed in a display of pugnacity. And obtuseness. And hatefulness. And, and-"Move this truck!" she commanded. "I insist that you move this truck right this minute!"

No one budged, not even so much as to shift weight from one foot to the other.

Wallace was there now (and what was his given name? Rudyard? Yes, Rudyard, after the English writer, or so he claimed), his jacket thrown casually over one shoulder, leaning into the fence as if he belonged there, as if he were a rube and hayseed himself. "Say, fellas, can't you see your way to letting us up the road here for just a minute? We won't be a bit of trouble-just want to take a picture maybe for the Sat.u.r.day edition-and you know Mrs. Wright here, don't you? Come on, be white about it."

They might as well have been posts, stones, piles of dung stacked up and molded into the shape and form of men. "Bah!" she spat. "Don't waste your time. Forget them. Lowlifes, lackeys, country morons." She swung round, furious, even as both her heels sank into the muck. "Back to the front gate, boys-we'll let the sheriff handle this!"

The evening shadows were deepening when they pulled back up to the gate, and where had the time gone? As soon as she flung open the car door she could hear the bullfrogs starting up in the lake, eh-lunk, eh-lunk, a sound so dismal she wanted to cry,51 wanted to tear her hair out and fall down on her knees and beat the earth with her fists-to be locked out, locked out of her own house, and in the evening no less, at suppertime, when she'd stood behind those commanding windows in her best clothes more times than she could count, entertaining brilliant and celebrated people while the whole countryside could do nothing more than whip up their buggies and shovel their manure and gape and wonder-but she told herself she had to be strong. And she was strong, stronger than he was, Frank, the milksop, the little man, and of course he was nowhere to be seen. Billy Weston was still there with the other two, though, looking tense. And the gate was still locked. She looked up at the windows of the house glazed with the declining sun till they were like blind eyes and even if she'd had binoculars she couldn't have seen inside-not from here, not from the road-and the thought of that made her furious all over again.

But who was this? A beery calabash-headed man in some sort of uniform that was distended like sausage casings round the midsection and down the tubes of the legs, and he was coming forward now, separating himself from the crowd-and it was a crowd, the yokels gathering for the show with their chew and their cigars and their big-knuckled pasty faded women as if they'd been summoned by the fire whistle, Frank Lloyd Wright and his locked-out wife the best entertainment in town-and suddenly it dawned on her that this was the sheriff himself. "Ma'am," he said, touching the brim of his hat.

She should have been pleased to see him, should have thanked him for turning out at such an hour to do his duty and succor her in her time of distress, but the very look of him infuriated her even more. This was her hero? Her knight? Her paladin? His shoulders sagged. He wouldn't look her in the eye. "They've locked me out of my own house," she said. "And he's up there right now, gloating. Him and his, his"-she wouldn't say "wh.o.r.e," not here, not in front of these people, though that was what she was-"his slattern."

He smacked his lips, dug with one delicate finger at something lodged between his teeth. "Who would that be, ma'am?"

"Who? What do you mean 'who'? Frank Lloyd Wright, the man named on the peace warrant. Are you going to go up there and arrest him?" She let her eyes rove over the crowd, then gestured angrily at Billy Weston. "And these men? They're, they're . . . obstructing, that's what they're doing. Obstructing justice. Arrest them. Arrest them right this minute."

Someone let out a laugh and then the laughter became general, rising abruptly and then dying out when she swung round on them, furious. "Laugh," she snarled. "Laugh, you idiots. And you"-pointing a finger at Billy Weston-"I'll have you fired, the whole lot of you, the minute I get control of Taliesin."

"Well, ma'am, I don't, uh"-the sheriff was fumbling in his breast pocket for the warrants, two thumbed-over slips of paper that could have been used as wadding at this juncture-"well, these men say he ain't up there. And her, neither."

She was astonished: Wasn't he going to do anything? Had he been bought off, was that it? Had Frank somehow got to him?

"You mean to tell me you're just going to take their word for it?" she said, fighting to control her voice. She was glaring at him now, and he was a small man too, for all the puffed-up flesh of him, a conniver, a fool, a coward. "Well?" she demanded. "Aren't you going to look for yourself? Aren't you going to do your duty? Your sworn duty? Isn't that what you're here for?"

He s.n.a.t.c.hed a look at her, then dropped his eyes and began working at the dirt with the toe of one worn boot. "I suppose I"-he glanced up at Billy Weston-"well, I guess I could, maybe, well, just take a look around the place, considering these warrants and all."

They all watched him gather himself up and shuffle to the gate, watched Billy Weston produce a key to release the padlock and swing back the bars to admit him, and they all watched as he trudged along the road and on up the hill to the house, the weariest man in the world. A feeling of anticlimax settled in-they'd wanted action, a raw burn of emotion, the seigneur on the hill exposed and humiliated, handcuffs, protestations, the puff of flash powder-but there was only this, this heavy-haunched, slope-shouldered figure receding in the distance and the frogs eh-lunking and the sun stuck fast in the treetops. People began to stir. One woman produced a sandwich. The newspapermen convened over cigarettes, and the farmers, trained to patience, squatted in the dirt and began to talk in soft voices. Before long the birds would go to roost, bats would flicker over the water and the whole countryside would become comatose as if a switch had been thrown.

Miriam was having none of it. Her shoes were ruined. Mosquitoes had bitten her-were biting her even now. She'd come all this way, produced the warrants, summoned the sheriff, endured more abuse and humiliation than any woman could be expected to take for even a single minute of a single day in an entire lifetime, and still she was locked out! Before she could think she was at the gate, a sign there-NO VISITORS ALLOWED-and she was jerking at it till the screws gave and she flung the thing down in the dirt and stamped on it with both feet as if it were the effigy of Frank himself. And now they were roused, all right, everybody on their feet-this was what they'd come for and she was going to give it to them. "You see!" she cried. "You see how it is? The sheriff can pa.s.s through these d.a.m.ned stinking gates and I can't? I, the legal owner of the property, of the gates themselves? Is that right? Is that what this country has come to?"

She could feel it all boiling up in her, a stew of rage and hate and despair, and she fed on it till there was no coming back. The sign was there at her feet and she kicked it till it skittered away from her and suddenly she was whirling around on them all, shouting now, the veins rigid in her throat. "You!" she cried, focusing on the nearest man, a farmer in overalls. "Aren't you ashamed? All of you, all of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Isn't there a man among you? n.o.body to aid a lady in distress against these, these-" but another sign caught her eye, the Taliesin sign itself, set in gla.s.s, and she was s.n.a.t.c.hing up the first thing that came to hand, a stone the size of her fist, and here she was battering the gla.s.s till it shattered in a rain of bright hard nuggets and she flung the stone away from her in a single savage gesture.

"Miriam!" somebody called. "Here, Miriam, pose for a picture!"

She wanted to wreck it all, tear the place down, see it in ashes. The dirt leapt at her, the sky collapsed. And what was this? A stick. She had a stick in her hand-Miriam, a picture!-and the photographer was setting up his tripod for the flash, Wallace scurrying to help him, the farmwives gaping, Myra swelling and swelling till she was ready to burst like a soap bubble, and at the very moment, the moment she was posed there with the stick held high, vengeful, heroic, imbued with the power of Diana the Huntress and Queen Elizabeth and every other woman who'd stood up for herself against the tyranny of men, Billy Weston and his minions sprang in front of her with a canvas tarp and the flash flashed on nothing.

"Yes," she was saying, "yes, I'm sure he was in there all the while, laughing up his sleeve. That's what insults me more than anything else-to think of him thinking he's got the best of me, and truly, Leora, I've never been so mortified in my life-"

There were flowers on the table, two dozen long-stemmed roses in a shade of red that edged toward violet, a color that reminded her of the sacred heart of Jesus glaring from the statue outside St. Mary's Church in Memphis. Frank had paid for the flowers-indirectly, at any rate-because Mr. Fake and Mr. Jackson had got him to cough up some of what he owed her, and given the mood she was in she felt she needed flowers. Just to cheer her. And she needed a gla.s.s of champagne too, and strawberries in cream and a piece of smoked sturgeon to pick over till her fingertips smelled of the smokehouse and the sweet imbricate slabs of flesh.

Leora made a sympathetic noise on the other end of the line, a noise so faint and vague you would have thought she was in California still and not just across town, on Lakesh.o.r.e Drive, visiting her sister.

"And the newspaper account was disappointing too. Didn't you think so? Really, 'Miriam Storms Taliesin; Repulsed,' and that sort of thing. Or what was the other one? 'Miriam Lifts Taliesin Siege; Returns Home.' Makes me out to be-oh, I don't know. Pitiful."

"Or sympathetic," Leora said. "People can't help but sympathize-"

"And the photograph. They blocked the one that would have done me justice-I told you that, didn't I? And this one they printed . . ." She was staring down at the newspaper, open to the picture of her posed against an anonymous backdrop of twigs and shrubs instead of the gate itself, her cape flaring, her face distorted under the burden of her hat. You couldn't even make out her features-and was her face really that wide? There seemed to be a glowing white ball descending from the turban and nothing more than two poked holes for eyes and a slash for the mouth as if in some child's drawing. "I don't know, do you like it?"

"Honestly? No. It doesn't quite . . . but what do you expect from the newspapers? "

Very slowly, as if it represented all the wealth of the world, Miriam poured herself a second gla.s.s of the wine, for which she'd had to bribe two bellhops and the man at the desk-the real stuff, they told her, the finest, when in fact it was no better than the rotgut they served in the speakeasies. But it bubbled and frothed and it reminded her of better times. "I did like this," she said, "in the second column? 'You are nothing but a bunch of blackguards,' she shouted to the defenders grouped in front of the locked gate. There's a certain courageousness to that, don't you think?"52 "Do you know what I think? I think you should consider a suit-"

"I am. We are. Mr. Fake said just this morning-"

"No, no-I mean against her. For alienation of affection. Margery Mc-Caffery sued her husband's secretary that time I was telling you about . . ." Leora lowered her voice to a whisper. "The secretary disappeared the very next day-probably ran to her mother in Barstow or some such place. And when he came crawling back, Margery just laughed."

The odor of the fish rose to her nostrils, vital and strong, blunting the perfume of the roses. She lifted her forefinger to her lips and idly licked it. Alienation of affection. She hardly knew what it meant beyond the literal meaning of the phrase, but the idea of it appealed to her. She closed her eyes and saw the blanched naked face of that woman in the hospital, childlike and afraid, little Olga, put-upon and hara.s.sed. And how did she rate Frank? She didn't. n.o.body did. n.o.body.

"Don't you see? That's the way to flush them out."

She filed the suit at the end of August in the amount of $100,000, Mr. Fake arguing that Mrs. Olga Milanoff, the Montenegrin dancer, had deprived her of her husband's society for the past eighteen months, a society she valued, after careful consideration, at some $5,500 a month. The only response from Frank was through the press. He dismissed the suit out of hand, claiming it was just one more attempt on his wife's part to annoy and hara.s.s him, and he refused to divulge the whereabouts of Olgivanna-it was no business of his wife or her lawyers either, he informed a reporter from the Chicago Tribune by long-distance telephone from Taliesin. Which only confirmed what Miriam had known all along-that he was hiding her there. He might have managed to pull his strings and get the warrants dismissed, both of them, but if he thought she was going to give in, he was as deluded as the fools who thought the Great War would last no more than six months. Oh, his little dancer was there, all right-of that Miriam had no doubt. She could picture her cowering someplace in that labyrinth of moldy rooms and reeking outbuildings, afraid of the light of day, confined to the kitchen and the pantry with the servants and the mice, jumping at every sound, and not just the reporters after her now but the process server too.

Yet the fact remained that the summons hadn't been served and you couldn't very well sue an apparition. Miriam brooded over that as August gave way to September, her resources dwindling even as Frank reneged on the hotel bill and Messrs. Fake and Jackson began to press her with statements for services rendered and the walls of her rooms seemed to close in on her as if she were the one caught in a snare and not Olgivanna. It rained for two days and she did nothing but sit at the window and watch the patterns the water made in the street. The black cars streamed by like hea.r.s.es. People huddled beneath umbrellas-but at least they were going somewhere, doing something, anything, even if it was hateful. She was not one for stasis. She needed movement, action, excitement, and who didn't but the dead or the soon-to-be-dead? She called Mr. Fake. Repeatedly. He had no news for her. Mr. Jackson would take the phone. He had no news for her either. And then they were both out and the secretary was very sorry.

Just when she'd begun to give up hope, when she found herself going down to dinner with her face discomposed from sobbing into her two cupped hands for what seemed hours at a time, when the pravaz went dull and she thought the rain would never let up, Mr. Jackson telephoned to report that Taliesin was hers. He'd arranged for a court order granting her admittance-those workmen had no right to keep her off her own property, no right in the world, and the court had come down firmly on her side-and he offered to drive her all the way up to Wisconsin himself. She could take possession of the place, move things in, do anything she liked with the artwork, the furnishings, the livestock. She could cut down the trees, drain the lake, sell off the corn, fire the staff wholesale and let the dust and cobwebs acc.u.mulate till the place looked like the catacombs under one of those old churches in Italy. If it struck her fancy, she could board up the windows, order a dozen Victorian loveseats, hang doilies from the famous cantilevered eaves. And Frank could do nothing to stop her.

This time when she stepped out of the car, there was only Billy Weston at the gate. She stood there glaring at him under the h.e.l.lish sun, enduring the mud and the insects and the a.s.sault of rural odors while Mr. Jackson handed over the papers and the two conferred. Even then, Billy stalled. He had to go up and telephone to Mr. Wright's lawyer, he said, and, infuriatingly, made her wait there at the locked gate while he ambled up the hill, disappeared into the house for a good ten minutes, and then ambled down again. "Only her," he said, addressing Mr. Jackson as he turned the key in the padlock and grudgingly pulled back the gate. "That's what the papers say, only her. Not you."

She felt strange coming up the drive, everything so familiar-the crunch of the gravel under her feet, the shadows, the angles of the buildings, the way the courtyard opened up like a pair of welcoming arms-and yet different too. How long had it been? Two years-better than two years. But Frank never stood still, that was for sure. He'd been busy since the fire, she could see that, new roofs sprouting over the living quarters, the back buildings more elaborate, more fully integrated into the whole. And the house was beautiful, she had to admit it. There was an aura of peace about the place, everything so still and ageless, and she had a thrill of recognition that took her all the way back to her years in Europe and the first time she stepped into the arching recesses of the Pantheon or St. Peter's Basilica. She was wrought up, of course she was, but the simple transparent beauty of the place had a calming effect beyond all thought of confrontation and loss, and the memories came back to her in a rush.

There may have been a lock on the gate, but there were no locks on the doors-Frank didn't believe in keys53-and she pa.s.sed through the courtyard and slipped in the main entrance. It was like plunging into a pool, cool and mysterious, the stone pillars burnished with an aqueous light, the wood glowing as if it were wet, and everything silent as a dream. He wasn't there. She wasn't there. n.o.body was. All those rooms, all that empty s.p.a.ce, and not a soul around, not even the servants. For a long while, Miriam hesitated at the door, breathing in the scent of the place, orienting herself-Frank was gone, vanished, and he'd ducked out on her again, the coward, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the little man-and then, gradually, it came to her that it was better this way, and her heart decelerated and her breathing slowed, and step by step, she entered deeper into the house and began to explore.

Every detail, every change, leapt out at her,54 and it was almost as if the flesh of a new house had been stretched over the bones of the old-and it had, because all this had been burned, but for the stone itself, hadn't it? She ran her hand over the rough pillars to feel the grit there, sat in the chairs, took in the views out the living room windows like an interloper, a thief of views. The more she explored-or was she snooping, was that what it was?-the more agitated she became. She saw the new carpets, the furniture, new artwork to replace the old. He'd been extravagant here, sparing nothing, and all the while pleading poverty to the court. But then he was just a two-bit schemer, wasn't he? A liar and a skinflint. He took from the rich and gave to himself and he didn't give a d.a.m.n about anybody so long as he got what he wanted.

She moved through the house like a detective in a dime novel, examining everything, the canned food in the cupboard, the table set for an uneaten meal, the dirty plates in the sink, the unmade beds-he'd decamped in a hurry, she saw that, but it gave her little satisfaction. There were the sheets in the master bedroom, sheets that smelled of him-yes, she raised them to her face-and something else too, another presence, her, Olgivanna, the usurper in her husband's bed. For a long while she sat there on the edge of the bed, her mind ranging so far that she forgot all about Mr. Jackson waiting for her at the gate and Billy Weston, whom she was going to sack the minute she had the opportunity, and all the rest of the toadies and ingrates too, and she might have stayed there till night came down but for the two very sympathetic gentlemen from the Bank of Wisconsin, Madison, who knocked meekly at the door to inform her that her husband was in arrears on his mortgage, which, sadly, had been inflated by the rebuilding loan, and that they were foreclosing on the property forthwith.

Unless, of course, she, as co-owner, could come up with the sum owing.

And how much was it?

Twenty-five thousand on the mortgage, plus a further chattel mortgage of $1,500 and liens for unpaid bills of $17,000, totaling, in all, $43,500.

She invited them in, apologizing because she was unable to offer them anything under the circ.u.mstances, and she sat there in Frank's grand living room with its gleaming treasures and baronial views, staring numbly at them, thinking first of her pravaz and then of Frank-he'd outmaneuvered her again, that was what he was thinking. Wherever he was. Out of the country, no doubt. Living in a cheap hotel where no one asks any questions. Maybe he was wearing a false beard-that would be funny, Frank in a false beard like some baggy-pants comedian on the vaudeville circuit. He thought he'd put one over on her. Thought he was having the last laugh. But he'd lost Taliesin and Taliesin was his life. And he stood to lose a whole lot more any day now. Because what he didn't know was that Mr. Jackson was also representing the little Russian's husband-Hinzenburg-and that the husband had brought adultery charges against him. And more: he was suing Frank for $250,000 for alienating the affections of his wife and daughter, filing a writ of habeas corpus for return of the child and offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for capture of the fugitives. Even then, even as she sat across from the lip-licking bankers and let her gaze rest on one of Frank's precious Chinese Buddhas, the sheriff of Sauk County, Wisconsin, was circulating photographs of him. And of her. And of the child.

Yes. And who was having the last laugh now?

CHAPTER 7: NOT A DANCER.

Olgivanna hadn't spoken with the reporter, hadn't admitted he was alive and breathing and standing there before her, his hands in constant motion and his face rearranging itself around every plea and provocation. She blocked her ears too, rising swiftly from the chair, taking Svetlana by the hand and marching straight into the house to close the door firmly behind her and instruct Mrs. Taggertz to send word down to Frank so that Billy Weston and the others could escort the man from the property with whatever degree of physical persuasion they deemed necessary. But the incident had its effect. For weeks she was afraid to leave the house, even to sit in the courtyard, though Frank tried to rea.s.sure her-he'd instructed the men to keep a lookout and he swore he'd have any and all trespa.s.sers prosecuted, "whether they're newspapermen or gypsies or Bible salesmen"-and she found herself growing paler and weaker by the day. Just to get out, just to free herself of all the little irritations of the household, the baby's colic, Svetlana's moods, Frank's all-encompa.s.sing presence, she found herself roaming the fields at night, in the fastness of the dark, and when the mosquitoes came to suck her blood it was almost a relief.

Very gradually, as spring deepened toward summer, she began to regain her strength. She felt it in her legs first, her calves hardening ever so perceptibly and the long muscles of her thighs and groin stretching to accommodate the pace of her nightly rambles. In the mornings, even before the sky began to shade to gray beyond the windows, she forced herself from bed and out into the garden, though she was weakest then, coughing with a persistency that alarmed her-and cold, cold all the way through, as if she'd never warm up again. But the garden needed tending, that was what she told herself. The peas and green beans were drowning in weeds, the tomato and pepper seedlings were delicate still and the sweet corn was at its most vulnerable, and while she slept a whole army of rabbits, gophers, beetles and caterpillars crept out to the feast. She didn't eat, didn't brew a pot of coffee or a cup of tea or even rinse her mouth with water from the pitcher on the stand beside the bed-she dressed in the dark in an old skirt and sweater and went straight out into the silent breath of the morning while the children were asleep still and there was n.o.body to see her.

Once the sun was up, she came in for breakfast, Frank already at work in his studio, Mrs. Taggertz feeding the children, the workmen hammering and measuring and sawing away at the perpetual revivification of Taliesin. She ate then-a soft-boiled egg, a slice of toast, coffee with cream and sugar-and afterward, if she had the energy, she sat with the baby and put Svetlana through her paces, an hour of dance, an hour at the piano, readings from the poets, drawing, painting, calligraphy.55 In the afternoons, she slept. And in the evenings, after Mrs. Taggertz had served dinner and the baby had been put to bed and she'd sat reading in the living room with Svetlana and Frank, she went back out to the garden, furtively, rising from her chair as if she were going to the kitchen or the bathroom and slipping out the door into the gathering dark. Moonlit nights were a blessing, the hoe an extension of her hands, her arms, her shoulders, one task leading to another until it was eleven, it was midnight, and still she was at it, the work consecrating her in routine. She spread the soil, paid out the hose, bent and clipped and dug, and the world of the reporters receded like a ship leaving the dock in a very dense fog.

By June, she'd begun to relax. The telephone rang still, rang continually, but she learned to ignore it. She put on weight-a pound or two, at any rate. Her complexion improved. Frank complimented her on her looks. She even began, tentatively, to sit out in the courtyard again without feeling as if she were being spied upon and twice she took Svetlana down to the lake to feed the ducks in broad daylight. And then one evening, as she played with the baby in the living room while Svetlana skipped rope outside the door with a rhythmic slap as regular as a heartbeat and the smell of fried ham and potatoes and onions rode a current of air from the kitchen, she happened to glance out the window to see a number of motorcars pulled up at the front gate. Absently, she rose to her feet and crossed the room to get a better look. There was a gleam of gla.s.s and metal, the roofs of the cars mirroring the sun in neat oblong sheets, movement there, people-men in hats-gathered in groups of two and three, as if they were looking for work.

Or a story. A newspaper story.

Her first reaction was to shrink back from the windows, though they couldn't possibly see her at this distance, could they? She went to the bedroom next, not to hide herself like a scared child-she was angry suddenly, and she'd never hated any cla.s.s of people in her life the way she hated these professional snoops and meddlers and why couldn't they just leave them alone?-but to fetch the binoculars from the table beside the bed. She wanted to be sure. Wanted to know her enemy. And then she would call to Frank and Frank would send the men down to confront them and everything would go on as before.

She came back into the room in a crouch, gave a glance to the baby, who was preoccupied with a stuffed toy in the middle of the carpet, sensing nothing, knowing nothing, then went down on all fours and crawled to the window. The scene jumped at her in magnification, the lake a slap of color, the lawn crying out till every blade of gra.s.s came starkly visible, the gate trembling and then sliding into focus. She saw Billy Weston there, his back to her, and two of the other men with him. And then the newspapermen, their hats creased, ties askew in the heat. There was a shout, m.u.f.fled by the distance and the interposition of the gla.s.s, the noise startling a flight of ducks up off the water to wheel over the house and throw a pulse of shadow across the room, and it was then that she saw there was someone else there too, a figure in motion-a woman-bending, rising in violent pantomime, bending again.

It was Miriam. It had to be. She was certain of it even as she shifted the binoculars to focus on the woman's face, but then the figure ducked out of view, erased momentarily by the torsos of the converging men before coming up triumphant to fling something down in the dirt in a dull blur of color. Another shout. The men smirking. Easing forward. A photographer there, setting up his tripod, the sun exploding against the windows of the cars and the woman whirling away from them all to stamp furiously at that thing in the dirt as if she were killing it. Only then did she stand still long enough to reveal herself.

Olgivanna had seen Miriam in the flesh just once-in the corridor of the hospital-but she must have studied the photographs of her a hundred times, fixated on her, fascinated, every line of her rival's face as familiar to her as her own, and now here she was, unmistakable, Miriam in all her belligerent glory, come to claim her own. She recognized the pug nose, the set of the jaw, the clamped insatiable mouth and the outsized hat slipped down over the eyebrows-and the eyes themselves, so startled and wide it was as if she'd been p.r.i.c.ked with a pin every minute of her waking life. It gave Olgivanna a strange thrill to see her this way, reduced at the end of a long optical tunnel, flattened and derealized, but it was short-lived. Any minute now-she was sure of it-Billy Weston would stand back and Miriam would pa.s.s through the gates and sally up the drive with her horde of reporters, and what then? Would they have to run out into the fields and hide? Crawl under the beds? And where was Frank?

Svetlana's rope beat and beat and beat again, echoing through the open door that gave onto the courtyard. There was a dull ringing from the direction of the kitchen, the cook rapping a spoon against the lip of a pot. And Olgivanna, absorbed in the spectacle of Miriam, forgot all about p.u.s.s.y until something came crashing down behind her and she spun round to see the baby tangled up in the cord of one of Frank's lamps, the gla.s.s shattered, the frame bent56-Frank would be furious, that was her first thought-and p.u.s.s.y expelling the first startled shriek of breath. Panic swept over her then-the electricity, the shards of gla.s.s-and she dropped the binoculars, sprang to her feet and s.n.a.t.c.hed up her daughter and she didn't care who was watching. In the next moment she was in the corridor, p.u.s.s.y raggedly wailing-startled, but no blood, and the lamp hadn't hit her, had it?-and calling for Frank in a voice that was a bitter distillate of rage and fear and impatience. "Frank! Frank! Where in G.o.d's name are you?"

He was in his studio, drawing, always drawing, no matter what the crisis, and he looked up sharply when she burst in on him-the children, especially bawling, red-faced infants, were strictly interdicted from distracting him while he was working because how could she expect him to earn a living if he was to be forever interrupted every time Svetlana skinned her knee or the baby pa.s.sed gas?57 "What is it now?" he demanded.

"What is it?" she threw back at him, even as p.u.s.s.y's screams climbed up the register and then stalled while she spat up a pale sour wad of pabulum on her mother's shoulder. "Have you looked out the window? It is that woman. Your wife. Miriam. She is here"-she felt the warm seep of the baby's fluids through the fabric of her dress, and it would have to be washed now, and p.u.s.s.y's dress too-"right outside at the gate. With, with, I don't know-reporters! They look like reporters."

He didn't get up from the desk, didn't offer to take the baby, didn't even bother to turn his head and look out the window to the sloping lawn that gave onto the lake and the meadow and the gate crowded with cars. "I'm aware of the situation," he said in a quiet voice.

Aware of the situation? She was stunned. And though she was a linguist, though she had French and Russian at her command in addition to her native language, as well as her English, which, if heavily accented, was nonetheless perfectly fluid and intelligible, she didn't know what to say. He was aware-and he was just sitting there?

His face was composed, his eyes locked on hers even as the baby kicked and struggled and let out a thin mewl of protest, and she could see that he was willing himself to stay seated, to project an air of coolness and indifference-for her sake. So as not to alarm her. He let out a sigh. "It seems Miriam has been up to her mischief. She claims to have some sort of court order-I've been on the phone to Levi58 over it-but I can guarantee you that she'll never set foot on this property again, no matter what it takes. I've got both roads blocked. And Billy's in charge. You know Billy. He would die before he'd give us up."

"Court orders? What sort of court orders? What do they say?"

"It's nothing. Legal wrangling, that's all."

"Yes, and that is what you are telling me with the reporters too, till that horrid man from the newspaper came here, and-I don't like it. I hate this, Frank. I hate it."

"Now listen," and he was out from behind the desk now, moving across the carpet to her, to take her and the baby in his grip that was like the grip of a t.i.tan, a hero who could hold the whole world up in his two arms, "there's nothing to worry over, nothing, nothing at all."

But he was wrong.

Within the hour they were both of them cowering like criminals in the hilltop garden, crouching over wooden stools in the dirt and whispering stories to Svetlana and the baby as if nothing in the world were the matter, while the sheriff, armed with his warrants, poked through the living room, the Blue Loggia, the kitchen, the bedroom and the studio. Within a day Miriam would be back on the attack. And within two months' time they would have to run yet again, packing up so hastily the beds had to be left unmade and the clothes strewn across the floor, breakfast abandoned on the dining room table to draw flies and the garden left to the crows, the gophers and the pulsating hordes of insects with their clacking mandibles and infinite mouths.

Frank tried to make it seem like an adventure, just as he had when they'd gone to Puerto Rico, but it was no more an adventure than fleeing the hospital when she could barely lift her head from the pillow or enduring the ragged have-nots of Coamo with their splayed dirty feet and toothless smiles and their emaciated goats and pustular dogs and the fried bananas that tasted like cardboard soaked in grease when she wanted only to be home at Taliesin with the baby beside her and the smell of fresh bread rising from the oven. He steered the vast gleaming hulk of the Cadillac across the countryside, heading west, terrifying her at every turn because he was always going too fast, as if the whole purpose of driving wasn't to get someplace in comfort and safety but to defy every law of the road, and he kept up a running monologue the whole time. For Svetlana-to keep her spirits up-but for her too. That was one thing about Frank-you never had to worry about a lull in the conversation.

"You're going to love it, Svet," he kept saying, "our own little cottage in the woods. On a lake. Lake Minnetonka. Can you say Minnetonka? Come on. You can say it. And I'll tell you, this isn't just a little puddle like the pond at Taliesin, but a true and veritable lake, full of fish, pike perch and suchlike. You like pike perch, don't you? And bears in the woods, wolves, and what else?-moose. You'll see moose too. Probably hundreds of them. And you know what? They've got a miniature canoe there, just the right size for a little girl-what do you think of that?"

Trees arched over the road, denser here, the woods alternately thickening and thinning as they drove west through Montfort, Mount Hope and Prairie du Chien and then north along the Mississippi to La Crosse and on into Minnesota, one hamlet after another falling away behind them and the farms losing themselves in palisades of timber. Svetlana played along-"Moose? How big are they? Bigger than an elephant?"-and if she was upset she didn't show it. But how could she fail to be upset? How could anyone, let alone a child? Perhaps Frank had seen all this coming-the lawsuits,59 Miriam's seizure of Taliesin, the foreclosure and pending eviction, the sheriffs and the lawyers-perhaps he'd kept his own counsel and planned ahead, finding them this refuge that lay somewhere up the road, but here was the vagabond life all over again, everything they'd need for a month-two months, three, who could say?-packed into the trunk of the car in an early-morning panic when every squeak of the hinges, every thump and rattle, was the furtive annunciation of the police come for them. And not just to serve writs or argue fine points of the law, but to arrest them both and take them to prison, lock them up behind bars like anarchists or bank robbers, and what then? More newspapers? More humiliation?

She tried to put the best face on it she could, tried to control herself for Frank's sake and the children's, but all she could think of was her garden, the flowers, the horses and chickens and cows-was everything to be sold off at auction? Would the tomatoes rot on the vine and the hydrangeas go brown for lack of water? It didn't improve her outlook when they stopped for dinner in La Crosse and Svetlana developed one of her moods, refusing to eat because she didn't like steak and didn't want pork and she hated fish and hamburger too, and no, she didn't want wieners or even ice cream or anything-and then the baby had diarrhea and it was one diaper after another and would they run out before they got to where they were going? And Frank, all the while the gayest, most carefree man in the world, chanting, "Minnesota, Minnesota, where the fish 're bigger 'n Dakota!"

If she was abrupt with the Thayers, who'd arranged the rental for them, well, she was sorry, she never meant to be rude with anyone, not the woman who owned the place or the cook c.u.m housemaid she'd left behind, but her nerves were strung tight and the first few days in the new house were a trial. There were the usual tribulations a.s.sociated with moving in-getting the children settled, stocking the larder, dealing with a new servant, going through the charade of making a home out of some stranger's house filled with a stranger's things-and the whole affair was complicated by the imposture of their new ident.i.ties. She couldn't be Olga anymore and Svetlana couldn't be Svetlana. They were the Richardsons60 all over again, Frank and his wife, Anna (a good ethnic name to account for her accent), their daughter Mary and the infant who wasn't Iovanna or even p.u.s.s.y any longer but simply the baby.

What to say? She'd been in a state of perpetual dislocation since she was a girl of eleven when she was sent to live with her sister on the Black Sea in Russia, learning a new culture and a new language, and then having to abandon it all at nineteen when the revolution broke out. She'd barely had time to make a home in Tiflis with Vlademar and her infant daughter when they had to flee in advance of the White Army, Georgei courageously leading them and a small band of his followers through Constantinople to safety, and then she'd found a home at Fontainebleau until Georgei's accident, and then at Taliesin, and was it too much to ask to have some peace, to sleep in the same bed two nights in a row? To be part of something? To live a normal life like anyone else?

Perhaps so. But she was nothing if not adaptable and the house did have its charms, Tonka Bay struck with light from early morning till late in the afternoon, loons calling across the water, the weather holding through September in a long lazy spell of Indian summer, and when it did turn in the first week of October the frost came at night to fire the trees in a display of color as rich as she'd ever seen. And they were together, just the four of them, with no battery of workmen hammering away, no clients to mollify, the outside world forbidden to them and their inner world all the richer for it. She adjusted to the cuisine of the new cook (a Miss Viola Meyerhaus, thick-legged and spinsterish, of indeterminate age, with her blond hair worn in an inflexible braid looped atop her head, whose dishes were invariably heavy with gravy, Kartoffeln, kraut and sausage, though she did make a wonderful Himmel und Erde, a mixture of mashed potatoes, apple sauce, onions, diced bacon and roast pork even Svetlana seemed to like), and on the cook's day off Olgivanna took the time to prepare soups and stews and bake confections till the house smelled the way a house ought to smell. Every day they went sailing on the lake, and in the evenings there were rambles in the countryside and then hours spent by the fire. Frank, ever restless, hit on the idea of writing his autobiography-if he was denied architecture, he could at least use his time fruitfully, couldn't he?-and she loved to sit and listen as he dictated the book aloud to the stenographer he hired on the strictest confidence.

All went well, aside from the occasional slipup-neither of them could seem to remember to call Svetlana "Mary" when there were people about, and the Cadillac, with its Victoria top and Wisconsin tags, had to have been fairly conspicuous, especially as the newspapers were running photographs of both Frank and her and trumpeting the not-inconsiderable reward for information leading to their arrest and prosecution-and if she were to look back on this period in the years to come, she would have seen it as being as close to a pure idyll as anything she'd ever experienced. Given the circ.u.mstances, that is. She was happy, genuinely happy, and again, just as she had at Taliesin that spring, she began, despite herself, to relax.

She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of tea one morning, Frank at work in his makeshift study on the pages he would dictate that evening to Mrs. Devine, the stenographer, the baby asleep, Svetlana playing some sort of game in the canoe (which was firmly tethered to the dock and under no circ.u.mstances to be untethered-or paddled-without an adult present) and Viola busy at the stove, when a man in his thirties with a high vegetal crown of yellowish hair came up the back steps and entered the house without knocking. Before she had a chance to protest or even open her mouth, he was holding out his hand to her, simultaneously apologizing for the intrusion and introducing himself. "I'm Mrs. Simpson's son?"61 he said, making a question of it. "And I'm so sorry to bother you, but I happened to be out from Minneapolis for the day-I'm an attorney, I don't know if my mother told you?-and I was just, uh, well, I mislaid my fishingpole and I had an appointment to go fishing this afternoon with one of my clients. I wonder if you wouldn't mind? I'm sure it's in the attic."

He had an eager look to him, as if he were a boy still-tall enough to graze the doorframe but without the excess flesh so many men put on as they drift into middle age, his face as bland as a fried egg and his eyes unwavering and clear-so that the request carried with it an automatic stamp of plausibility. He'd lived here, grown up in the house. His fishing apparatus was in the attic. What could be more reasonable?

"Oh, I'm sorry, h.e.l.lo, Viola," he said, addressing the cook before Olgivanna could muster a reply. "I didn't see you there. Are you well?"

"Yes, Jimmy. Very well, thank you. And your mother?"

A glance for Olgivanna, just to see how far he could go. "She's enjoying her vacation-thanks to you, Mrs. Richardson. She went up Duluth way to visit with my aunt, but you know Mama, Viola, she's back with me and my wife now-and just loving looking after Buddy and Katrina."

Frank must have heard the male voice echoing round the kitchen because he came out of his study then, looking neutral-not alarmed, not yet-and said, "Well, well, who do we have here? Is it Mrs. Simpson's son, is that what I hear?"

The man gave a visible start before he recovered himself, his voice rising to a kind of yelp as he moved forward to take Frank's hand, "Yes sir," he said. "Jim Simpson, at your service." And then he explained his errand. "You wouldn't mind if I just dashed up the stairs-it won't be a minute. Of course, I didn't mean to . . . well, I guess I've already put you out-"

Frank didn't demur. He stood there a moment, looking up into the man's face, trying hard to read him. "You do much fishing, Mr. Simpson? " he asked finally.

"Oh, yah-but not as much I'd like. You know how it is, busy, busy, busy all the time."

"And what are you after-pike perch?"

"Yah, mostly."

"Panfish, I suppose?"

"Yah."

"Any whitefish in the lake? That's the fish I prefer"-and he turned to her then-"isn't it, Anna? Best-eating fish around."

"Well, you know, Mr.-Richardson, right?-I'm not sure on that. Don't know if I've ever-well, listen, I've taken up enough of your time already."

"Go on ahead," Frank said, "go get your fishing rod. And I'll say goodbye to you now, sir." They shook hands again, as if sealing a bargain. "I'm right in the middle of something," Frank added, by way of explanation. He winked. Grinned. "Work, you know. No rest for the weary."

"Or the wicked either. But if you don't mind my asking, what is it you do?"

"Philately."

"Stamps? "

Frank nodded. "That's right."

"Well, that must be-interesting, I suppose. Is there a living in it?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised."