The Women: A Novel Part 9

She gave him a look and he let go of her arm. "Mrs. Nellie Breen," she boomed, "but you can call me Mother. It was your a.s.sistant at Midway, Mr. Mueller, sent me. You have my deepest condolences and all the redemptive love of the Saints and the Virgin Mary and the Lord Jesus Himself for the terrible afflictions that came down upon your head, which I saw in the newspapers . . . Which way did you say the kitchen was? And I'll need to see my room, of course."

At first he thought she was too frail for housework, but he was wrong there-she worked throughout the day without stint, in a kind of quiet outrage that took itself out on dirt and disorder. And if he thought the ear trumpet laughable, the resort of whiskered nonagenarians, a prop for the vaudeville stage, he quickly came to appreciate its value. He wanted efficiency. He wanted quiet. And there really wasn't much need to communicate with Mother Breen, not after they'd got through the initial civilities and the dishes were soaking in a pan of hot water in the sink.

The weeks began to topple forward, a series of unanch.o.r.ed pillars thundering to earth one after another. He barely slept. And when he did sleep he was plagued with nightmares, the face of Carleton, a scrim of blood, the children's hacked limbs and the creeping damp inadmissible blotches that infested the sheets under which they lay splayed like roots torn from the earth. Rigor mortis. He'd never known what the term meant, never wanted to know, the miniature bodies laid out in a grotesque parody of rest and surcease. When he closed his eyes, even for a minute, he saw the dead children, saw Mamah, and then the naked pillars and the ghostly chimneys rose up as in a separate reality, skewed, out of plumb, irremediably wrong. No design. There was no design. Just chaos.

He turned to work, buried himself in it-and it might have sustained him if it weren't for the eternal vagaries of finance. Though Midway Gardens had opened to grand success at the end of June-a thousand and more of Chicago's upper crust gathered there in tuxedoes and gowns, the National Symphony Orchestra playing three separate concerts, Pavlova dancing, the hoi polloi mobbing the outdoor beer gardens and everyone enthusiastic in their praise-September came on and still the final details were left unfinished. Waller88 was out of money, flat and busted, and that was that. There were gaps everywhere, art gla.s.s yet to be installed, sculptures, murals, but no amount of pleading, anger, resentment or even logic could sway the man-the money was gone and Frank would just have to be patient. Patient? He needed a return, needed money of his own to reconstruct Taliesin, and where was his fee? Where was his recompense for the hundreds of hours he'd put in? For Taliesin? For Mamah?

At home, in the evenings, Mother Breen fussed over him and he ate alone-roasts, Irish stew, broiled lamb and Lake Michigan whitefish in cream sauce-then sat working on the plans for Taliesin, the drama of creation taking him out of himself for hours at a time. Mother Breen chattered all the while in her jagged unmodulated tones, inculcating him in the details of her private life as she served the meat, cleared the table, ran a ceaseless broom over the floors, and the sound of her voice, a feminine voice for all its stridulation, was as comforting in his present state as a choir of angels. She was a widow, he learned, nee McClanahan, with references from Monsignor O'Reilly and the Howard Turpetts, with whom she'd been in service for thirty-two years till the cholera took them both on a trip to the Orient. Her daughter-she had just one daughter and four sons, scattered to the winds-had been a disappointment to her. She went to ma.s.s each morning at five to pray for her and for her sons and for him too ("Mr. Wright," she'd say, dropping her voice from the key of fulmination to something like a shout, "I wear my knees out over you, don't you know? ") and again after she served the evening meal. She slept under three blankets, even on the hottest nights. "Rheumatism," she explained. "The curse of the old." And she looked at him as if he could commiserate, but he wasn't old, not yet-forty-seven last June and each day feeling his strength and determination returning by increments.

He took her to Wisconsin with him on the train and left her to fight the incursion of ash in the studio, the back bedroom, the kitchen, the pantry and anywhere else a window was left open or a shoe had found its mark, while he walked the site and conferred with Billy Weston and Paul Mueller over what needed to be done. She was a fury and she brought order to the house in a way his own mother never could have, because his own mother, though he loved her more than any other woman in the world and needed her now more than ever, would have nagged and coddled and irritated him in a way this new mother, this artificial mother, never did. Mother Breen. She cooked for the men, she scrubbed and washed and ironed, and she never heard a word you said.

Gradually, through the fading haze of September and on into the rains of October and the early enduring freeze that was November that year, the old rhythms rea.s.serted themselves. He traveled freely between Spring Green and Chicago, cajoling clients, submitting plans and proposals, looking out for materials and browsing shops and galleries for things of beauty to replace what had been destroyed. He manipulated accounts, wrote checks against insufficient funds, placated his daughter when she came round again and again wondering if there was any way she could help-with correspondence, dusting, anything. And his mother. He spent as much time with her as he could, a.s.suring her that he was rebuilding for her, so that she and Aunts Nell and Jane could be with him permanently,89 and she seemed mollified, though she kept asking about Mrs. Breen. Who was she? Why was she at his side at a time like this instead of his own mother who'd given birth to him and raised him up to be what he was? Could she cook-was that it? He preferred her cooking to his own mother's? Most of all, though, he worked to rebuild Taliesin, laboring side by side with the men in the bitterest weather, oblivious to the cold and discomfort, watching the patterns emerge day by day from the farrago of wood and stone and stucco.90 His muscles ached. He began to recover the weight he'd lost. The nightmares fell away in the face of exhaustion and he slept as he'd always slept, in an unbroken descent into the deepest oblivion.

Throughout it all he continued to receive letters of sympathy from friends and strangers alike, hundreds of letters, an avalanche, so many he couldn't possibly begin to answer them. Each day there was a new sheaf of envelopes on his desk, the newspapers having whipped up an outpouring of unfettered emotion from people all over the world who wanted to share in his grief, wanted to tell him of their own losses and bereavements, rea.s.sure him, scold him, praise and criticize and offer up their prayers. He couldn't read the letters, not after the first few. They depressed and irritated him. Who were these people to think they could invade his life, whether they meant well or not? Was this notoriety? Was this what notoriety meant? People nosing into your private life like parasites, digging at your soul, insinuating themselves through two thin sheets of paper?

"Burn them," he told his secretary. "All of them. Unless they're from people I know and want to know. Friends, clients, family. Burn the rest. I don't want to see them."

And so it went. But the secretary, a judicious woman, set aside some of the more intriguing and compa.s.sionate specimens, thinking they would appeal to his sense of himself in a very specific and therapeutic way. She bound these letters with a strip of ribbon and every few days set them down on his desk. "I thought these might interest you," she would say, quickly adding, "I've burned the rest."

One morning in early December she laid a single letter on his desk. "This one seems very heartfelt," she murmured, and he looked up at the catch in her voice. She gave him a weak smile and excused herself. A cold rain fell beyond the windows. He got up a moment to poke at the fire, then went back to the drawing he was working on, pushing the letter to the corner of his desk. For the next hour, he barely glanced up, trying out one idea after another for the j.a.panese, envisioning a hotel that would be neither Oriental nor Western, a grand edifice that might combine some of the structural elements of Midway Gardens, layered stone, brick, with a pool out front to bring it down to earth and reflect its lines-preliminary sketches, that was all, because the commission wasn't a.s.sured, not yet. Though it would be, he was confident of that, and he couldn't help calculating the commission on a building with a nearly limitless budget, two million, three, maybe more. He'd forgotten all about the letter, but when he next glanced up, there it was, in a cream-colored envelope embossed with the initials MMN.

He took it up idly, his mind in j.a.pan still. A faint scent of perfume rose to him, as if a new presence had entered the room, a woman's presence, sleek and refined and dwelling in abstraction. He put his nose to the envelope-he couldn't help himself, and how long had it been? It was addressed in a bold looping hand that seemed to leap off the page to Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect; the return address gave a street number and arrondiss.e.m.e.nt in Paris, but the postmark was stamped Chicago, Illinois. He unfolded the letter and began to read with an absorption so complete it was as if a spell had come over him: Dear Mr. Wright, I am writing to express my deepest sympathy and shock over your tragic loss, knowing how painful such a loss can be, especially at this time of the year, when we all look back upon our sorrows and blessings in the approach of Yuletide as if gazing into a reflection in the vast darkling mere of our lives. Oh, to think of the hand the Fates deal us! Love and death poised in counterpoint, cruelly, cruelly! For I too have borne the terrible tragedy of a loss in love and life and I can tell you that you must think not of what might have been, but of your loved one arisen in the ecstasy of eternal being. We are kindred souls, we two. Battered souls, souls yearning for the sh.o.r.e of lightness and floral display to show its face amongst the battering waves of the dark seas of despair . . .

The confident flowing hand led him on through fifteen closely inscribed pages offering hope and resignation in equal parts and a.s.suring him that new a.s.sociations, new challenges and joys awaited him as they awaited her and all those whose spirits were undamped and unbowed. In Sympathy and Affectionate Hope, the writer concluded and gave a Chicago address beneath the ecstatic looping flourish of her name: Madame Maude Miriam Noel.

CHAPTER 2: ENTER MIRIAM.

She was sunk into the sofa in Norma's sitting room-or living room, as they called it here-taking a cup of tea and idly shifting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle round the end table for lack of anything better to do, when Norma came in with the mail. Outside, beyond the gray frame of the window, the weather was dreary, funereal clouds strung from the rooftops like laundry hung out to dry, and so cold even the dirty gray ratlike pigeons were huddled against it, dark motionless lines of frozen feathers and arrested beaks blighting the eaves as far as she could see down both sides of the block. She hadn't been out of the house in two days, hadn't been out of her wrapper, because this cold was like some sort of cosmic joke, a cold beyond anything Paris had seen since the glaciers withdrew in some unfathomable prehistoric epoch when people still went round dwelling in caves. Chicago. How could anyone ever possibly live here?

Of course, she reminded herself, she was a refugee now,91 and would have to make the best of it. And Norma was sweet, she was, though the apartment was cluttered and overheated, the wallpaper ludicrous, the decor what you might expect of a curio shop, and where was her daughter's taste? Had she learned nothing from her mother's example? Inherited nothing? Was it all Emil, then, was that it? Her dead husband's face waxed a moment in her consciousness, and he'd been a good man, really, quiet, considerate, supportive, but with just about as much artistic sensibility in his entire body as she possessed in one little finger. The apartment. Norma's clothes. Her son-in-law. She felt the anger come up in her in a buoyant rush, the words already forming on her tongue, wounding words, nagging, but constructive, reconstructive, because it was a tragedy to live like this, to, to-when Norma said, "Mama, there's something here for you."

And then it was in her hand, an off-white envelope decorated with a single red square in the lower left-hand corner and above it the initials FLLW. She set down her teacup. It might have been her imagination, but the day seemed to brighten just perceptibly, as if the sun really did exist out there somewhere amidst all that gloom. The anger she'd felt so intensely just a moment earlier dissolved in a sunset glow of warmth and satisfaction. Norma was studying her. "What is it, Mama?" she asked, an antic.i.p.atory smile on her lips. "Good news?"

Miriam didn't answer, not right away. She was going to take her time because she didn't have to open the letter, not yet-she already knew what it would say, more or less. He would thank her in an elaborate, courtly way. Express how deeply moved he was to hear of her commiseration and how truly he wished to return the sentiment. He would be intrigued too-he had to know who she was who could know his heart so intimately. There would be all this and more: an invitation. To meet. At his studio. His home. A grand room someplace, one of his shining creations, lit softly with his exquisite lamps, the light of the hearth gathering overhead in the oiled beams, his prints and pottery emerging from the shadows to lend the perfect accents. He would be honored, et cetera, and he didn't mean to be impertinent in any way, but he just had to see her-see this marvel of perception-in the flesh, if only for the briefest few fleeting moments.

Of course, as is often the case, the reality of a given situation doesn't necessarily accord with one's expectations-her years with Emil had brought that home to her, resoundingly-and the architect's response wasn't quite what she'd hoped for. He was intrigued, yes, how could he help but be? And yet he was distant too because he didn't know her, couldn't begin to see her true self through the impress of her pen-he might have thought she was some overheated spinster with a poetic bent, another parlor philosopher, one more pet.i.tioner reaching out to cling to his feet as he ascended the Olympus of architecture-and there was no invitation.

Though certainly he was interested. She could sniff that out in the first few lines, anyone could. And she immediately wrote back, her second missive even more effusive than the first (and why not?-she was too great and giving a soul to restrain her feelings) and this time she told him more about herself, about her flight from Paris, her romantic yearnings, her life lived in the service of her art, and she found a dozen ways to praise his genius that had revolutionized the very highest art of them all for an entire generation. In a postscript she begged for a meeting, however brief, because her heart simply wouldn't rest to think of him alone in his torment. She signed herself, In All Sympathy and Hope, Madame Noel.

The reply came by return mail. He would be pleased to receive her in his studio at Orchestra Hall92 and perhaps, if time allowed and she was willing, to show her some recent examples of his own art. Would five o'clock, Thursday, suit her? If not, he'd be happy to arrange another date and time. He awaited her reply and looked forward with great pleasure to meeting her. And he was, just as she'd expected, faithfully hers, Frank Lloyd Wright.

She spent three hours on her clothes and makeup, rejecting one outfit after another until she settled on a clinging gown of chartreuse velvet cut to show her throat, shoulders and arms to best advantage. She powdered her face, did her eyes and lips, brushed out her hair-and her hair was her glory, always had been, as abundant as a debutante's and not a single thread of gray showing through the russet curls that fell en ma.s.se at the nape of her neck-and then, after a painstaking inspection in the full-length mirror, she looked to her jewelry. A selection of rings-the scarab, of course-her diamond and seed pearl cross with the rose gold chain to bring his eyes to her throat, the lorgnette trailing languidly from its silk ribbon. She wanted him to see her as she was, au courant, cultured, a gifted artist who'd exhibited at the Louvre and was tres intime with the salons of Paris, a woman of stature and character, the natural beauty whose presence and refinement made all the rest of the women toiling along the streets of the Windy City seem like so many mutts. "How do I look?" she called out to Norma as she swept into the living room. And Norma, bless her, gazed up at her mother in genuine awe. "Oh, Mama, you look like you just stepped out of the Paris rotogravure!"

She spun round twice, reveling in the fit of the dress and the soft flutter of the skirts at her ankles. "And what do you think of this-for outer-wear?" Studying herself in the mirror over the sideboard, she dropped a shoulder to slip into her sealskin cape, then leaned in close to pin the matching cap atop the crest of her curls. A moment to touch up her lips, drawing down her mouth in an irresistible pout-let him resist me, just let him, she was thinking, full of a spiraling ascending joy that threatened to lift her right off her feet-and then she whirled round to give Norma the full effect.

"Well?" she said.

Norma had got up to cross the room to her. She reached out a hand to smooth the fur. "Oh, Mama," she whispered. "It's beautiful."

And Miriam was soaring, soaring, no need for the pravaz, not now, not in the mood she was in because no elixir could hope to match or improve on it-she was beautiful, she was, and she knew it. She bent for a final glance in the mirror, made a minute adjustment to the angle of the cap, patted her hair in place. Then she straightened up and gave her daughter a fervent smile, feeling like an actress waiting in the wings for her cue, the whole dreary apartment suddenly lifted out of its gloom and irradiated with light. She dropped her voice to the register of seduction. "I'll want a taxi," she said.

A brisk anarchic wind seized her as she stepped from the cab, her cape billowing, hat ready to take flight, all the grit and refuse of the filthy avenues and back alleys flung up at her as if in a hurricane, so that her chief concern as she went up the stairs to the lobby was her hair. And her face. Her face, of course. She would be late for their appointment, no question about it-she was already late-and now she was going to have to stop in the ladies' lavatory and make the necessary adjustments. Heart pounding, out of breath, fl.u.s.tered-yes, fl.u.s.tered-she tramped through the lobby looking for the lavatory, and when she found it, when she pushed through the door and into the warm brightly lit sanctuary that was, thankfully, deserted at this hour, she went directly to one of the stalls and locked herself in. What she was thinking was that she couldn't let him see her in this state, her nerves all aflutter as if she were some chorus girl plucked out of the Folies-Bergere, and so to calm herself, to slow things down and give her that air of Parisian languor that was sure to captivate him, she extracted the pravaz from her purse.

Afterward, she saw to her face and hair in the mirror, in full possession of herself once again. She reapplied her lipstick with a hand as steady as a surgeon's, smoothed down the chartreuse velvet and gave a tug at the neckline to make the material lie just so, flared the cape, refreshed her perfume. For a long moment she studied herself in the mirror from various angles, even as two other women-middle-aged drudges93 without the faintest inkling of style or carriage-came through the door, chattering over the affairs of some office girl or other. She ignored them-Let them look, let them appreciate style, real style, for once in their G.o.dforsaken lives-and gave herself one final appraisal. Satisfied, she swept out of the room and across the lobby to the elevator, where two men in beautifully tailored suits stepped aside with fawning awestruck looks as she announced the floor to the elevator man and he tried his best to stare straight ahead.

She was greeted by a young male a.s.sistant-the offices lavish with Oriental art, a pair of Ianelli sprites, realized drawings and intricate models, the lighting exquisite, taste and elevation oozing from the very walls-and then shown into a hallway connecting to the studio, where she caught a glimpse of a short stocky elderly man with an enormous head ducking into a doorway before she was led into the studio proper and seated in a high-backed Craftsman chair. But this was no ordinary chair, and the thought came home to her with the force of revelation-this was a Frank Lloyd Wright chair. She was sitting in a Frank Lloyd Wright chair, a masterpiece designed by the Master himself! There was genius here, genius invested in the design that lent verticality to the horizontal lines of the room, in the cut and mold and finish of the wood. In the decor, the walls, the rugs, the hangings. It was as if she'd been ushered into the salon of Des Esseintes himself.

The a.s.sistant-he had the face of an acolyte, stooped shoulders, pursed lips, mole-colored hair swept across his brow-had pulled out the chair for her as if performing some holy rite. He'd offered to take her cape, but she'd declined. She wanted Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright to get the full effect of her, en ensemble, and now she had a moment to arrange the folds of the cape and settle herself. Her chair, she saw, was one of a group of three-the other two flanked a small inlaid table against the wall-and it had been set here in front of an oversized desk decorated with an enormous vase of cut flowers that gave up their beauty and fragrance in defiance of the weather and the season both; behind the desk an Oriental screen depicted a dark twisting pine with a pair of cranes nesting in the branches. "Mr. Wright will be in directly," the a.s.sistant whispered before creeping out of the room. A moment pa.s.sed, everything as still as a church, and then suddenly he was there, the very man she'd seen in the hallway, catlike, alert and present, immanently present, and could it be? The graying hair, the head of marble? But of course, of course. Those eyes. The lines of grief round his mouth. He was fraught, heroic, and young, much younger than he'd appeared at first glance- "Madame Noel?" he said, coming round the desk to give a short bow and take her hand in his. "It's a great pleasure-" he began, and then faltered, the customary rituals of greeting failing him because they were inadequate, hopeless, a falsification of everything he was feeling in that moment. She could see it instantly, see her power reflected in his eyes, hunger there, confusion, a gaze of pure astonishment running up and down her body like the touch of his two hands, and something else too, something deeper, primal, naked in its immediacy and need.

She gave him a soft slow smile, the pressure of her fingertips on his, then dropped his hand to lean forward and set her gold cigarette case on one corner of the desk and the little leather-bound volume she'd brought him on the other. "Oh, believe me, the pleasure is all mine," she said, her voice falling down the register till it was a whisper, a purr. "Or no, that's not right at all-the honor. It's an honor simply to be in your presence."

He flushed, fighting to recover himself, his voice too loud all of a sudden: "No, no, I do mean it, the pleasure's all mine. You-your letter. Letters." He'd backed away from her as he might have backed away from a fire flaring up round a length of pitch pine and settled himself behind the desk. "I was deeply moved," he said. "You express yourself exquisitely, tremendous command of the language."

She looked up at him, holding his gaze, then crossed her legs and began removing her gloves, finger by finger, as languidly and delicately as she could manage. All the while, he was watching her, fixated, as if she were performing some miracle of prestidigitation. "Do you mind if I smoke?" she asked, taking up the cigarette case so that he could see it, see her initials engraved there and the ampersand that joined them to the initials of the man who'd given it to her.

"Oh, no, no, not at all." And he leaned forward to light her cigarette, his eyes never leaving her face.

She tilted her head back and exhaled, in her element now, as secure as a porpoise in the deep rocking cradle of the sea. "Well," she said, dropping her chin to focus her gaze on him, "how do you like me?"

It took him a moment-he was, as she was soon to learn, rarely at a loss for words-and then he spoke the truth, the gratifying truth, quite plainly: "I've never seen anyone like you."

She let her smile bloom again and then-had she ever felt so free, so magnetic?-she began quoting Rimbaud in the accent of the transplanted Parisienne she was, and of course he'd never seen anyone like her, how could he have? " 'Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleure! Les Aubes sont navrantes. / Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer: / L'acre amour m'a gonfle de torpeurs enivrantes.' "

He was smiling too, smiling so hard it looked as if his face would rupture, but this was most definitely not a smile of comprehension. Could it be that her hero, this arbiter of taste, this pa.s.sionate artificer, the Hephaestus to her Aphrodite, did not speak the language of romance? Of civilization?

"Comprenez vous?" she tried, leaning forward now.

An awkward moment, the first in this enchanted encounter, pa.s.sed between them before she switched to English. "It's a poem," she said. "Meant to soothe you in your suffering because you must know that others have experienced desolation too. You're not alone, that's what I'm trying to convey. Not alone." She leaned into the desk. "Listen," she said, dropping her voice lower still, "the poet says: 'But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. / Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.' And now the last line, which applies perhaps more to me in my present state than to you, though I know you've felt deeply and felt the hurt of it: 'Sharp love has swollen me with heady languors.' 'Swollen me!' Isn't that the saddest thing you've ever heard?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, taking up one of the tools on his desk-a triangle, was that what it was?-and turning it over in his hand. "It's quite beautiful. The French especially. You recite so, so evocatively." He set down the triangle, took up something else now-a T-square. "I'm more of an Emerson man myself. Longfellow. Carl Sandburg-he's a personal friend. Terrific man. Great soul."

And now he was reciting for her, his face lit with the pleasure of it, the music of him, his eyes: " 'You will come one day in a waver of love, / Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, / The tan of the sun will be on your skin, / The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech.' "

She sat perfectly still a moment, letting his words resonate till they were alive inside her, till she felt them like a rhythmic pulse that beat along with her own. "Magnificent," she said. "Bravo! You recite so exquisitely I would have thought you an actor. And your voice-"

His smile showed the perfection of his teeth. He tapped one hand on the glowing surface of the desk as if to keep measure with the lines still flowing in his head. "It's the poet," he said. "Give Carl the credit. Speaking of poets, would you happen to know of Taliesin, by the way? Has he come into your purview over there in Paris?"

He hadn't. She'd never heard of him. She composed her face, all seriousness and a bright eagerness to know. "Is he Italian?"

"No, no, no: I'm talking of the legendary Welsh bard and shape-shifter, the man whose face was so beautiful it was said to radiate light.94 Richard Hovey-do you know Richard Hovey? He wrote a masque called 'Taliesin' some years back? No? First-rate. I think you'd appreciate it. Very delicate and deep. Like you." He paused, as if he'd gone too far, his eyes dodging away from hers for just an instant. "Well, anyway, I've named my house after Taliesin-my estate, that is. In Wisconsin. After the poet. And you must see it, absolutely, you must-when, that is . . ." he trailed off.

"I know what you're feeling," she said, with fervor, real fervor. "You poor man. How you've suffered. You have. I know that perhaps better than any soul on this earth, because we're attuned-we're twins, that's what we are, twins." She was so excited she very nearly jumped out of the chair to run to him, clutch him to her, heat and heal and solace him with a pa.s.sion so perfect and deep he'd put all the tragedy and ruin behind him forever. But not yet, not yet: the moment was too delicious. She slid forward till she was perched on the very edge of the chair, her hands in motion, her eyes speaking for her. "But listen," she said, "listen to Gerard de Nerval, just listen: 'I move in darkness-widowed-beyond solace, / The Prince of Acquitaine in a ruined tower. / My star is dead...' "

Her eyes were full. She couldn't go on. If she were to look back in that instant on all the heightened moments of her life, all the intensity, the pa.s.sion, the quarrels and turmoil and transcendent flights of sheer spiritual grace, nothing could have compared to what she was feeling in those precious minutes since she'd walked through his door. She couldn't seem to breathe. She felt faint. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "Forgive me. I'm just-it's just that I am so . . . deeply . . . moved . . ."

And then he was there at her side, offering his handkerchief, the finest cambric, faintly scented, and she was dabbing at her eyes. "Here," she said, impulsively s.n.a.t.c.hing up the pamphlet she'd brought him, "here, take this as the smallest consolatory gift from me to you in your time of need-and take it to your heart. The scriptures heal-Jesus heals. I know. I've been down that road."

He looked puzzled. Son of a preacher, nephew of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who was one of the great pulpit orators of his time, and he was doubtful? Reluctant?

"Here, take it," she said again, her voice reduced to a kind of sob, and she had to get hold of herself, had to bear down here a moment, or the mood would evaporate, the whole shining room with its glitter of art and hope and beauty dissolved like a vision out of The Arabian Nights, and she felt the pressure of his hand in hers and then the book-Mary Baker Eddy's sweet, sweet revelation-pa.s.sing from her fingertips to his.95 "You'll heal," she whispered, her voice steadier now. "Trust me. You'll heal."

Somehow they were both standing. His arm was round her shoulders and his hand-his hand-was unconsciously ma.s.saging the short thick st.u.r.dy hairs the seal had once worn in the polar sea to fight back the chill of the world. It was perfect. It was exquisite. And what was he saying-murmuring-in her ear? "There, there, it's all right. I'll be fine. I will. And you, you kind, beautiful and spiritual woman, you'll be fine too. I'll read the book. I'll read it because it's from you."

She raised her eyes to him. She was trembling. Her voice was a whisper. "Has anyone ever told you you have the most magnificent head?"

Again he looked puzzled.

But she went on, the words coming in a rush now: "You must sit for me, I won't take no for an answer, and though I prefer hands-hands are my special interest, and feet too, hands and feet, but no matter-I'll mold a bust of you and it'll be magnificent, the grandest thing I've done. But you will sit for me? Won't you? Promise?"

The next two weeks were a tourbillion of dinners, dances, museums, art exhibitions and automotive visits to the houses he'd built and of which he was as preening proud as a child with his first a.s.semblage of wooden blocks. He would pull into the drive at one domicile or another without announcing himself, spring out like an acrobat to rush round to her side of the car and wait impatiently while she prepared herself for the blast of the wind, then march her round and round the place, expatiating on every last detail-right down to the origin of the copper in the downspouts-before waltzing into the house as if he owned it and starting all over again with the interior details. All the while, the inhabitants standing patiently by as he criticized the style and placement of the furniture or some element of his conception that didn't seem sufficiently appreciated, he never took his eyes from her. And despite the cold, despite her aching feet and the strain of bursting into the homes of total strangers who looked at her as if she were something between a captive and an invader, his gaze-awestruck, appreciative and undisguisedly carnal-made her glow.

As Christmas approached and Norma began draping random sprigs of holly about the house and trolling carols in the kitchen (flatly and out of tune, because, sadly, she'd also apparently failed to inherit her mother's musical talent, but hadn't she sung "Frere Jacques" so beautifully as a schoolgirl-or was that Corinne?96), Frank's attentions became ever more insistent. There were parties, of course. Parties everywhere. Daily. Nightly. In lavish homes, galleries and theaters, lavishly decorated for Yuletide, colored servants sc.r.a.ping about with trays of drinks and delicacies and all the haut monde of Chicago gathered round in their furs and jewels and fancy dress. Frank became the very avatar of the season, funneling his genius for interior design into a cornucopia of Christmas display and superhuman good cheer, parading her around on his arm as if she were the rarest treasure of all. "You're my jewel," he would say, and kiss her full on the lips, thrusting himself at her till she could feel him hard against her-and she would withdraw as delicately as she could without dampening his ardor entirely, and call him naughty or a billy goat or some such childish designation. And then he was on her again and again till she thought she would split open with the heat of her own desire. He would have her-and she would have him-and soon, soon.

Still, she didn't know quite what to expect when he invited her to his house on Christmas Eve itself. Would his grown children be there? His wife? His mother? The comical little housekeeper with the ear trumpet she'd heard so much about? His friends and a.s.sociates? The neighbors? Or would it be just the two of them, locked in a pa.s.sionate embrace as if they had no other attachments in the world?

It was past dark when the taxi pulled up in front of the house. This was a small house, modest and neat, the house of his exile from the place in Oak Park he'd given over to his wife and the ruins of his mansion in Wisconsin, and if she'd expected something grander, a structure commensurate with his beauty and wisdom and greatness, she buried her disappointment. This was temporary. She could appreciate that. She was living a temporary life herself, and even as the thought came into her head, she felt a violent upsurge of feeling for him: they were exiles, both of them, and the fates had brought them together for mutual solace. What could be more perfect? More glorious?

Full of hope and love-swollen with it, yes-she came briskly up the walk, watching for patches of ice because it wouldn't do to fall and turn an ankle, though even that would have its rewards, her leg delicately elevated before the fire as he tended to her with a strip of bandage and a gla.s.s of champagne, his fingers kneading her flesh, wandering up her calf and back down again, stroking, probing, caressing . . . But here he was, the door flung open on a flood of light, dressed in a black velvet dinner jacket and Chinese trousers, his hair backlit like the nimbus of an angel-"Miriam," he was calling, "my love, my dear, my jewel, here, let me help you-"

The fire leapt up. There were bowls of blood-red roses everywhere. A brazen Buddha. The lamps he'd designed himself with their marvelous geometrical patterns and their soft shimmers of light. Candles aglow. The table set for two. Champagne on ice. And music, delicate, delicious, a string quartet serenading her from the Victrola in the corner. "It's breathtaking," she said, even as he kicked the door shut and took her in his arms. "Everything you touch. Just breathtaking!"

They couldn't stop talking-and kissing, kissing too-ranging the whole world over, from the Greeks to the Romans to the contemporary theater and the joys of Germany, Italy, j.a.pan-she must go to j.a.pan, she absolutely must, he insisted: the cleanest and most perfectly organic society on earth-and, of course, Paris. Which was her province. If she must go to j.a.pan then he must come to Paris-with her as his guide. Oh, and she sang on about Paris as if it were a car ride away, as if they could browse the antiquarian shops and stroll the boulevards before the clock struck midnight. She was intoxicated, absolutely and thoroughly, right to the core of her-and not from any opiate or even the champagne, but from being there with him on the most precious night of the year.

They ate in front of the fire at the table he'd laid there, each dish served up by him on a covered platter, hearty food-cod in cream sauce, salt pork and potatoes, too hearty maybe, too plain and well, Midwestern, but good for all that-and there was no sign of the comical little housekeeper or anyone else. Afterward she smoked before the fire and delicately tipped back a demita.s.se of coffee and some sort of liqueur she couldn't identify (he abstained) and let her voice sing till she might have been a tropical bird fluttered down out of the grim black sky to brighten this parlor and this house till it shone like the center of the universe-and on Christmas Eve, no less!

"Do you see my ring?" she asked at one point, holding out her hand to him as they sat together on a stiff-backed sofa that might have been a thing of beauty but wasn't sumptuous at all, more like a pew in a monastic chapel, and wouldn't a few pillows or even a quilt go a long way toward improving it-and the comfort of the room too? But all thought flew out of her head because he took her hand in his and kissed it and kissed it again, running his fingers up her wrist to her forearm, the exquisite pressure there, the fire . . . "It was worn by Cleopatra," she went on, but he was bent to her hand still, kissing, kissing, and her breath was coming faster, "to keep her lovers faithful. This . . . very . . . ring . . ."

His hand slid up her arm, along the smooth velvet path, no resistance to the material at all, and he was embracing her throat now and giving her the full weight of his eyes. He murmured something, whether it had to do with Cleopatra and her lovers or the height of the ceiling or the color of her eyes, she couldn't say, but her voice was teasing out the subject, breathy and deep, no going back now-"Beware," she whispered, "to all faithless lovers, but you, you're not . . . faithless . . . are you?"

His hand was on her breast, slipping beneath the material to the naked skin, to the aureole and the nipple which hardened to his touch. And his lips. His lips were on hers. She heard the fire crackle. Heard the record hiss against its label. Wind beyond the windows. The ticking of a clock. She leaned back to accommodate his weight and the slow sweet delirium of his hands and his tongue.

"Are you?" she whispered.

And he, fully aroused, his face gone rubicund and his ears glistening like Christmas ornaments in the quavering light, breathed his answer against the soft heat of her lips. "Me?" he puffed, working, working hard, writhing against her and tugging at the b.u.t.tons of his trousers as if they were each individually on fire. "Never," he said, sinking into her, "never."

CHAPTER 3: NOW COMES FEAR.

Whether Norma or her little toad of a husband approved or not was an utter irrelevance: she was moving in with Frank Lloyd Wright at 25 East Cedar Street and the whole world could choke on its pinched pathetic pet.i.t bourgeois notions of propriety for all she cared. She was going to live. Express herself. Roam with the giants. It happened that she was in love with a towering genius, a Wagnerian hero who stood head and shoulders above them all, a Tannhauser, a Siegfried-and he was in love with her, her and no one else-and if they thought she was going to confine herself to a miserable back room in a hideous flat and live like a Carmelite nun at her son-in-law's sufferance, they were sadly mistaken. She had her bags sent over, the trunks she'd brought with her from France, her clothes, jewelry, objets d'art, and by the middle of January she was established, mistress of her own house once again.

It was a kind of miracle. Like being on a honeymoon all over again and this little house the ship that would take them across the wide ocean into the seas of bliss. The nights were rapturous with lovemaking, the mornings sunstruck (or at least they felt that way), and while he was at his studio spinning out his designs in the company of his scurrying functionaries, she busied herself with making the house just a soupcon more comfortable-or less austere, at any rate. That was the term she used over the telephone to Leora-"He seems so austere, almost Puritanical, as if a plush pillow were a violation of the sumptuary laws or some such thing." She selected curtains for the windows, pillows for the sofa and each of the flat hard-bottomed chairs. She ordered linens and stationery featuring their entwined initials and her familial crest. China, cutlery-carpets, for G.o.d's sake. And his taste in cuisine: "I tell you, Leora, I try, I do-and we've been through two cooks already-but the only stuff he seems to like is so bland, so unappealing in every way, I couldn't imagine a single soul in all of France, even the dirtiest peasant speaking some dialect that sounds as if he's invented it on the spot, bothering to feed it to his hogs. No, I mean it. I do. He needs reforming. Needs a good dose of culture, beyond all his drawings and his houses, which really are exquisite, I'm not denying that, not at all-"

By the end of the second week, the punishing gray chill of January folding itself into the unrelenting arctic blast that welcomed February to the bleak canyons of Chicago, they had their first quarrel. The cook, on her instructions-and with her supervision-had prepared a lovely saumon tar-tare avec sauce moutarde for a prelude, followed by a bisque de homard, salade d'endive and a spectacular flambe of ris de veau, and she served a perfectly delicious Sancerre with the salmon and a Margaux with the sweetbreads she'd ordered herself from the wine merchant and had no little trouble finding it, incidentally, in this backwater, and he'd been less than impressed. In fact, at one point he pushed back his plate-shoved it aside as if it were something he'd found in the street-stalked into the kitchen without so much as a word and reappeared a moment later with a gla.s.s of water and an apple. While she watched, astonished, he peeled and divided the apple, feeding it into his mouth slice by slice and washing it down with the water.

"I spent all afternoon on this meal," she said quietly, fighting to keep any hint of severity out of her voice. "And Madeline virtually slaved to bring it off."

He gave her a sharp glance. "Tell Madeline she's fired."

"Fired? Why, I've just hired her. And she's excellent, truly excellent-Montreal bred, perhaps, but-"

"Do I have to repeat myself? She's fired. I'll send to Taliesin for Nellie Breen if this is the best you can do." He stabbed at a slice of the meat with the paring knife and held it, dripping, before him. "This sort of thing may be all the rage in Paris, but it won't do here. We don't eat this tripe-"

"Sweetbreads," she corrected, and she could feel herself going hot all over. The temerity of him, the insult. He was a boor, that was what he was. A barbarian. "You're a boor. That's what the problem is. You need civilizing, are you aware of that?"

"And we don't take alcoholic beverages-wine-with our meals."

She was angry all of a sudden, so infused with rage she couldn't speak. She laughed instead, a bitter cutting sarcastic laugh.

He was standing now, every inch of his five feet six or whatever it was clonic with fury. "Smoking," he snarled. "It's like living in a tobacco warehouse somebody's set afire. It's a disgusting habit. Totally inappropriate for a lady. And I won't have it."

And now the battle was joined, because she was on her feet too, ready to throw it all back at him. "Rube!" she shouted. "Hayseed!"

He gave her a look that chilled her-he was as capable of murder as any cutthroat roaming the alleys of the south side-and he actually took a step toward her, as if he would dare. Just let him, she was saying to herself, her feet braced and her body gone rigid. Just let him. But he checked himself-she saw the rational part of him take over as if a switch had been thrown, and he was afraid of her, wasn't he? The little man, the coward. "You disgust me," he said finally. And he turned on his heel, jerked round and strode out the door and into the black curtain of the night and he didn't think of his cloak or his hat or the scarf that never once left his throat but when he was sitting at table or asleep in bed.

"Go!" she shrieked, darting to the door with the plate of sweetbreads and the sauteed champignons de la foret and the sherry sauce she'd created from scratch raised in one hand. "Go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" And the plate went with him, describing a drooling parabola across the moonlit yard till it crashed to the walk and scattered its contents for the birds and the squirrels and the scavengers of the night.

They made it up, of course-with a furious bout of lovemaking that began almost as if it were a free-fall match between two determined adversaries and ended in the sweetest surrender-but not before he went off to Wisconsin without her. For three entire days. And no word of him. Nothing. It was as if he'd never lived here, as if she'd never known him, and this house, filled with his things, was a memorial only, a tomb of n.o.body's making. The first night she didn't sleep an instant, replaying the scene over and over again in her head, wishing she'd showed more restraint, less fire and fury, because she did love him as she'd never loved anyone in her life, she was sure of it, absolutely and without question, and she missed him with an ache that echoed inside her like a cry of despair from the cored-out trunk of a withered tree.97 The following day was purgatorial, an acc.u.mulation of intolerable minutes and torturous hours that made her lash out at Madeline and the various delivery men presenting their wares, and she wouldn't call him at his offices like some castoff baggage who can't keep track of her man, she wouldn't. By the close of the second day, she was certain he was deceiving her with another woman, his secretary, his wife-Kitty, that was her name, Kitty, and why not just call her c.u.n.t and get it over with? She telephoned Leora and sobbed through the thin swaying wires, telephoned Norma to tell her her mother was ruined, and finally, though she fought it, she broke down and telephoned his studio. Where the reedy wisp of an effeminate acolyte came over the line to inform her that the Master-Mr. Wright-had gone up to Taliesin to oversee the work there. And when was he expected back? Oh-a long calculated pause-he couldn't say. After that, she had her pravaz, only that. And even then, she cried herself to sleep.

At breakfast the morning after they'd made it up he was tender with her, tender and gentle too, and they sat across the table from each other in a satiate glow, no need for words, their silence broken only by the most solicitous murmurings, Would you care for another cup of tea, dear? Cream? Can I get you another egg? Darling, if it's not too much trouble, would you please be kind enough to pa.s.s the salt? She clung to him when he got up to leave for work, their kisses so heated he very nearly had her right there on the carpet, and when he came home the first thing she did was lead him into the bedroom. And she let Madeline go, just to please him, and that night she stood over the stove herself, half-dressed, and made him potatoes in the pan with onions and a steak au jus with no flavoring other than a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper. He never stopped talking, not even to draw breath, and after dinner he sat at the piano and serenaded her till she sank into the new plush pillows like a queen, like Cleopatra herself. He was hers, he was hers, he was hers, and the world was a good and beautiful place once again.

Their second quarrel came at the end of that week and he was the one who set it off-again-because he was in a mood, she could see that the minute he stepped through the door. He didn't like the pillows, that was it. They made the place look like a wh.o.r.ehouse, he said, and she said, "So what does that make me?"

He had no answer for that, and she saw what a little man he was, what a yellowbelly, and no sooner did he divest himself of his cape and hat than he started in on the subject of her stationery and the china she'd ordered. "It's vulgar, Miriam. Your coat of arms? What of mine? Don't you think the Lloyd Joneses go back farther than the, the-whoever your people are?"

"My father was a Hicks. And we trace our origins back to the earliest settlement of Virginia. If it weren't for the War Between the States, we'd-"

"The plain red square," he said. "That is how I've marked my stationery all these years and that is how I'll mark it in the future. Do you understand me? I won't discuss it."98 She was seething-the way he cut her off, dictated to her. Who did he think he was? "Yes? And what will you discuss? Taliesin? Tell me about Taliesin and why I'm not invited there. Is it because of that dead woman? You think I'll sully her memory, is that it?"

He averted his face-a sure sign he was lying-and said, "No, that's not it at all. It's just that we're rebuilding right now and you really wouldn't be comfortable there, what with the dirt and confusion, the limited room, and my attentions of course would be distracted in terms of the work going forward-"

"What about your mother?"

"My mother? What has she got to do with it?" His voice flared. "I suppose you resent her having given birth to me, is that it? Because you weren't there?" He was bent over the lamp in the corner now, jerking at the switch. The light caught his face as he turned to her, everything about him savage and animalistic, like some burrowing thing trapped outside its den, and he was hateful, hateful.