The Women by T. Coraghessan Boyle
The operator got her the number and her heart began to race as she waited for the connection to be made. There was a sound of static, a soft mechanical buzz, and then a voice she didn’t recognize—a man’s voice—came at her out of the ether: “Hello?”
“I want Frank,” she said and she wished now she’d taken a shot to calm her nerves. She was wrought up all over again, the tension tearing at her till she felt as if she were reliving the shock of that first moment at the door when that little man, that fleck of human detritus, had handed her the summons—
“Yes?” the voice said. “Who is this?”
“Miriam. His wife. And who the hell are you?”
“Uh . . . sorry.” The phone was muffled; someone was whispering. “One moment, please.”
Frank came on the line then and his voice was bluff and businesslike. “Yes, Miriam, hello. What can I do for you?”
She couldn’t contain herself, the air ratcheting up out of her lungs and tearing at her throat as if she’d swallowed a pneumatic pump: “Criminal!” she shrieked. “Weasel! You, you fucking vermin! How dare you treat me like this? Really, how dare you!?”
“Miriam,” he said. And he might have said something to calm her, something in the soft priestly tones he used when he was being holier-than-thou, which was about eighty percent of the time, but she didn’t hear him, didn’t want to hear him.
“Shit!” she shouted. “Shit! You think you can cast me off like some whore, some, some bitch you’ve used for your pleasure and got enough of, is that what you think? Because if you do—”
There was more, a whole lot more, and tears too—she couldn’t help it, she was only human and this was the lowest, dirtiest thing that anybody had ever done to her—and he tried to be meliorative and soft but the sound of him, the smugness, the finality in his voice, just turned all her jets on high till he began to harden and the connection was suddenly, violently, broken.
In the morning, once she’d bathed and done her hair and used her pravaz to spread its creeping warmth even to her toes and fingertips and numb her to whatever the day might bring (and yes, she’d hidden her kit from Frank as much as possible and from Leora too, not that she was ashamed or in danger of becoming a morphinomane or anything of that nature, but because her medicines were private, her own affair and no one else’s, no matter how close they were—or had been), she sat down with Leora over breakfast and they both agreed that she needed a lawyer of her own. Frank had a lawyer. Why shouldn’t she have one? How many women had they both known who’d been tossed out in the street like so much baggage and without a dime to their names? Or a nickel? Not even a nickel.
After breakfast she went back out to the bungalow and used the telephone to make an appointment for that afternoon with Wilson Siddons Barker III, an attorney who specialized in divorce cases and came highly recommended by any number of people Leora knew. She spent a long while on her face and clothes—the better part of the morning—finally selecting a spring suit of her own design, an all-wool Poiret twill in navy with a silk peau de cygne lining, and her blue velvet cape and turban to match. She completed the outfit with her pearls and lorgnette along with two strings of jet beads and a diamond brooch her mother had bequeathed her. “Oh, my, my,” Leora said when she had a look at her, “you are a marvel.”
“You think the brooch is too much?” she said, surveying herself in the full-length mirror in the front hall.
Leora had taken some care with her dress too and she did have style, no doubt about it. She wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Miriam herself was, but then Miriam could carry it off in a way Leora never could—and yet still she had to admit her friend looked terrific in mauve crepe de chine and a bob hat with a spray of pheasant feathers that trailed prettily over one shoulder. “No, no,” Leora murmured, her lips pursed and her eyes fixed on her. “You want to make an impression.”
“You like it? You do? Really?” Miriam felt a flood of satisfaction and for a moment forgot the underlying purpose of all this. They were going to lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, yes, but that was just a diversion from the real meat of the day—the interview with the attorney and just what that meant. “You know, this brooch—and the cameo, see the cameo? It’s meant to be the Three Graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia—isn’t that darling? Brilliance, Joy and Bloom. This was all my mother’s and her mother’s before her. My jewelry”—she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw a tall regal woman staring back at her, the sort of woman who could fend for herself, fetch attorneys, fight Frank Wright till he was sorry he’d ever been born—“is my one real hedge against the worst. If I have to go begging, at least I’ve got something to fall back on.”
“And the ring? Is that the Cleopatra ring?”
“So legend has it. I don’t know the whole story, nobody does, I suppose, but it had been in my husband’s family—his grandfather had it from a jeweler who’d dealt in all sorts of antiquities, especially Egyptian. It’s supposed to be a scarab, you see? They say Cleopatra wore it as a talisman to keep her lovers faithful.” She laughed. “As if anything could control a man when the urge comes over him. But did you know I almost sold it in Paris when the war broke out? There was a man from the museum there, very charming, very persuasive, but I just couldn’t part with it. And I’m so glad. It’s my most important piece.” A smile now, rueful, a delicate delicious infusion of the lips with blood—and she could see Leora was skeptical, or maybe jealous, maybe that was it. Jealous, but doing her best to hide it. “It’s my ring of vengeance, darling. And don’t you think Frank doesn’t know it.”
As it turned out, William Siddons Barker III was very happy to see her, though he sympathized with what she was going through, of course, and it was a shame, a real shame (she broke down in his office, she couldn’t help herself, even with Leora at her side), and he assured her that he would do everything he could for her. He was true to his word. Through his Chicago associate, Frederick S. Fake,17 he was able to get Frank to drop the suit by threatening to counter-sue on the grounds of physical cruelty—yes, and how would that look in the papers, WORLD FAMOUS ARCHITECT BEATS WIFE—and they moved on from there, very slowly, step by faltering step, toward the inevitable.
It hurt her. Every day it hurt. Who was he to throw her over? She was the prize here, not he. And she wrote him to that effect, letter after letter, alternately damning him and reminding him of the passion they once shared, a passion that towered above the petty loves and conventions of the masses—nine years his mistress18 and never a complaint out of her, or barely, barely a whisper—and she called long distance whenever the rage boiled up in her, just to hear the iron in his voice and listen to his pathetic rationalizations, to berate him and scream and sob and curse over the wire till all the operators’ ears from Los Angeles to Spring Green must have sizzled like fat in a pan.
He was adamant—there could be no reconciliation. There was no question of it. On that he wouldn’t give an inch. Still—and this puzzled her—he went out of his way to be reasonable when it ultimately came down to reaching a compromise. More than reasonable: generous. Him, of all people. Frank, who considered an invoice a kind of memorial only and who wouldn’t pay up even if he had the money right in his pocket and the sheriff was at the door. And when they did finally agree some four months later on a divorce settlement—$10,000 in cash, $250 a month maintenance and a half-interest in Taliesin—he even threw in a bone. She’d always claimed she wanted to go back to Paris, his lawyer told hers—that was his understanding—and he wanted her to know he was amenable to that. So much so that if she would leave for Paris within six weeks of signing the settlement, he would give her an additional one thousand dollars on top and exclusive of everything else, just to help ease her transition.
She thought about that—Paris—the rooms she’d taken over an antiquities dealer on the rue des Saints-Pères, the artists she’d counted among her closest intimates, the bistros, the cafés, the gay life she’d led after Emil had passed on, and
What she didn’t know about—not yet—was Olgivanna.
CHAPTER 3 : THE WAY THINGS BURN
Frank took to Svetlana as if she were his own, and during the first month of the new year it seemed to Olgivanna as if he were going out of his way to spoil the child—endless trips to the zoo, concerts, ice-skating parties on Lake Michigan, frankfurters, popcorn balls, candied apples on a stick—but that was just part of his charm. He never did anything by half measures. He was an enthusiast for life, in love with her and her daughter too, genuine and unself-conscious, though when they were seen on the street together people naturally mistook Svetlana for his granddaughter and that seemed to throw him off his stride. He was no grandfather, he would protest (though he was—his son John had a daughter of three or four, that much Olgivanna knew), but if he was living an illusion, strutting at her side like a young lover and reveling in it, why deny him? Svetlana could have been his daughter—she should have been, an exquisite long-limbed beauty of seven with much more of her mother than Vlademar in her, and she loved the attention, loved the treats and the piggy-back rides and climbing up beside him on the piano bench to pound the keys and sing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Sweeter Than Sugar” along with him, her voice piping and probing even as his own mellow tenor held fast to the melody.
Olgivanna was aware that he was auditioning for the role—Daddy Frank, that was what her daughter called him, just let him step into the room and she’d jump up and spring for his arms, shouting out “Daddy Frank, Daddy Frank!”—and she gave him credit for it, for the headlong rush of his desire and commitment. He was a force of nature, that was what he was, an avalanche of need and emotion that swept all before it. And she was in love too, mad for him, for the pleasure he took in her and the pleasure he gave her in return (Vlademar was nothing compared to him, nothing, as appealing as a dishrag, a milksop, and for the rest of her life she would say that she didn’t know what love was—the physical act, the uniting of two bodies above and beyond the intertwining of their spirits—until she met Frank). And more than that, she was in search of something to hold on to—a cause, a modus vivendi, yes, but security and protection too—and he was there to provide a pair of broad shoulders19 when she most needed them—her savings were dwindling, her husband wasn’t doing much to help and it was awkward living at someone else’s pleasure, a guest in that overcrowded apartment in Chicago with people she’d never really liked to begin with. So when he asked her to come to Taliesin again, with her daughter, and not just for a weekend, but to move in and be part of the life of the place, of his life—she never hesitated.
This time the route was familiar to her. And if the countryside seemed bleaker than it had at Christmas when even the most dismal farmhouse was enlivened by a wreath at the door or a candle in the window, at least now she had Svetlana with her to keep her company. They had their sandwiches, milk for her daughter, coffee for her, Svetlana alternately chattering to her new teddy bear (“Eat your sandwich, Teddy; Pack your things; We’re going on a trip!”) and bent in concentration over a tracing book and a box of colored pencils Frank had bought her. Everything they had in the world was packed into a single steamer trunk in the luggage car somewhere behind them (and it wasn’t much—a few changes of clothes, books, letters, two porcelain dolls Svetlana couldn’t seem to exist without—because all this time they’d been living under Georgei’s regime and Georgei preached asceticism).20
“What’s it like, Mama?” Svetlana would ask every few minutes and she would try to summon the place—it wasn’t the château at Fontainebleau, outside of Paris; it was a rambling tawny stone bungalow of the Prairie Style on the outskirts of Spring Green, Wisconsin, and it would necessarily have to be self-sufficient in terms of its culture and amusements. “You’ll like it,” she said. “You will. It is—I don’t know—like a castle, only without the turrets.”
The pencils flew over the page, good high-quality tracing paper that wouldn’t tear through. Svetlana took a moment to finish what she was doing—red for the chimney of the house she was tracing, black for the smoke—and then she lifted her face. “What are turrets?”
“You know, towers—like in ‘Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ ”
“Like in France.”
“Yes, that is right. Like in France. Only this place—Daddy Frank’s place—doesn’t have any of them.”
“What does it have?”
She wanted to say it had beauty, it had genius, soul, spirit, that it was the kind of house that made you feel good simply to be inside it looking out, but instead she said, “It has a lake.”
“For ice-skating?”
“Mm-hmm. And in summer”—she tried to picture it, the fields come to life, the barn doors flung open and the cattle grazing, fireflies in the night, constellations hanging overhead in the rafters of the universe—“we can swim. And take the boat out. And fish too.”
“Are there ducks?”
“Sure there are. Geese too.” She was guessing now, running ahead of herself as the train rolled through the deep freeze of the countryside, twenty below zero, thirty below, the rivers like stone, the trees in shock, not a living thing moving anywhere in all that loveless expanse. “And swans. Swans that come right up to you and take the corn out of your hand. Remember those swans in Fontainebleau—the black ones?”
Svetlana stopped drawing now, two pencils—the green and brown—bristling from the knuckles of her left hand, the red one arrested over the chimney even as the roof spread wide to enclose the stick figures she’d drawn beneath it: two of them, just two, mother and daughter in matching triangular skirts. Her eyes went distant a moment and maybe she was seeing the swans, Lionel and Lisette—that’s what they’d named them, wasn’t it?—or maybe she was just tired. What she said was: “Are we almost there yet?”
Frank and Kameki were waiting on the platform to greet them, their breath streaming, hats cocked low, collars pulled up high. They leaned into the wind, their eyes searching the windows of the train as it slowed with a seizure of the brakes, and then Kameki turned aside and cupped his hands to light a cigarette and Frank started forward, the skirts of his heavy twill cape fanning and fluttering round the tight clamp of his riding breeches and the sheen of his boots. He was right there, so close she could have reached out and touched him, but somehow he didn’t see her, and the train slid past him before it jerked to a halt just up the line. Svetlana couldn’t contain herself. She sprang up on the seat and pounded at the window, calling out his name over and over until finally he looked up and saw them and his face changed. Olgivanna waved then, her heart lifting.
But there was something wrong, she could see that the minute she stepped off the train. Frank was as brisk and energetic as ever and he was wearing his broad welcoming smile as he helped first her and then Svetlana down from the train, and yet he seemed distant. He didn’t look at her, not right away, and that was strange. He bent instead to Svetlana, gave her something, a sucker, and asked if she’d had a pleasant trip, but Svetlana, the drawing book clamped under one arm and Teddy under the other, was shy suddenly and could manage only a whispered “Yes.”
A savage wind swept the platform, crushed leaves and bits of refuse skittering before it, the sky roiling overhead, and Olgivanna had a moment to take in the deserted streets and battened-down buildings of the town—village, hamlet—where she’d be spending the immediate future and maybe longer, much longer, before he did look at her. The engine exhaled with a long shuddering hiss of steam. Kameki hustled off after the baggage. And Frank finally did acknowledge her, but he didn’t take her in his arms, didn’t kiss her—instead he held out his hand for a firm handshake, his glove to her
He dropped her hand then and leaned forward with a quick dip of his shoulders. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he said in a low voice, his breath caught up in the wind and gone. “It’s the neighbors. The papers. We can’t have a fuss.”
“Daddy Frank,” Svetlana cried, tugging at his scarf—and she’d recovered herself now, oriented to the cold and the moment of arrival and the town that wasn’t worth a second glance—“can we go see the swans?”
He seemed to wince at the sobriquet—Daddy Frank, Daddy—his eyes jumping from Svetlana to her and back. The smoke of the engine twisted in the wind and drove at them, harsh and poisonous. Something caught in her eye and she blinked. “Swans?” he repeated. “What swans?”
“I have told Svetlana”—and she was dabbing at her eye with her handkerchief—“that we would see the swans on the lake—and the ducks too.”
“Oh, yes, yes, the swans. Of course, honey, of course we will. But not now, not till summer. Now we have ice. You like ice, don’t you?”