The Women (37 page)
This time he didn’t come back. And though it ate at her, through every minute of every day, she stayed on in the empty house. Every time she heard a noise in the street, the scrape of a shoe along the walk or a voice lifted in greeting, she was sure it was him, sure he’d come back to her, but she was disappointed. Over and over again. As the days wore on, she steeled herself—she had resources of her own. And she had her pravaz and a prescription from a very forward-looking physician whose address she’d found in the directory. And this was her house now and she would be damned if she was going to leave it.
Of course, she wrote him—daily, sometimes two or three times a day. She telephoned to him as well and when she did manage to reach him, he seemed distracted—and guilty too—and though he tried to act as if nothing were the matter, as if he was simply preoccupied with the building at Taliesin, she couldn’t really be held accountable if her voice did rise above an acceptable level because she was only human, as she reminded him, and not a memory. Or was she? Then his letters, which had been sympathetic, solicitous, kind—but distant, as if he were writing to an aunt or a sister away on a foreign mission—turned more resolute, as if he had finally understood that he and she could never be reconciled again. The one that hurt her most, the one that drove her out of his house and into a first-class compartment on a train headed west for Albuquerque,
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addressed her in tender reminiscent terms, especially as he talked of her charms and the thrill of knowing and loving her and how terrible he felt for having abandoned her. But it was a letter of discharge and no doubt about it. Because he was a little man. Because love—with her, at any rate—led inevitably, through stages, to ruin. “Reason is gone!” he wrote, invigorating the apostrophe with his overwrought punctuation. “Charity is gone—Now comes Fear—Hate—Revenge—Punishment—Then Regret—Shame—Humiliation—Ashes, It is the accepted Road—all ambitious Souls hear me! Sex is the curse of Life!”
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addressed her in tender reminiscent terms, especially as he talked of her charms and the thrill of knowing and loving her and how terrible he felt for having abandoned her. But it was a letter of discharge and no doubt about it. Because he was a little man. Because love—with her, at any rate—led inevitably, through stages, to ruin. “Reason is gone!” he wrote, invigorating the apostrophe with his overwrought punctuation. “Charity is gone—Now comes Fear—Hate—Revenge—Punishment—Then Regret—Shame—Humiliation—Ashes, It is the accepted Road—all ambitious Souls hear me! Sex is the curse of Life!”
She brooded over this ugly proposition all the dreary way across the country—sex the curse of life, indeed; he hadn’t felt that way on Christmas Eve when he’d had her twice in succession and then again the following morning, the celebration of Christ’s birth and the sacred hymns of the angelic choir notwithstanding. Or in the weeks after when he’d installed her in his house like a houri extracted from his harem and had his way with her whenever the urge struck him, which was any time of the day or night because he was as randy as a goat, the randiest man she’d ever been exposed to, even in France, even in Italy. And now, suddenly, sex was the curse of life. He’d twisted everything, the hypocrite, making her out to be the one at fault, reducing the monumentality of what they’d had together to a vulgar expression of sexual gratification as if they were apes in the jungle or some such rot. Well, she wouldn’t have it. And she wrote back to him, page after page, her emotions burning into her fingertips, the fountain pen, the ink that seared the very paper before her.
She blasted him, of course she did, but she expressed the fullness of her love too—and it was no infatuation, she reminded him, but a mature and spiritual love that stood against the petty conventions of a society bound up in its petty rules.
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She wouldn’t go to Taliesin if he begged her. She couldn’t. “Because a spirit walked abroad there whose presence must not be offended by one who truly loved him.” She went on in this vein, dredging up every Gothic reference to churchyards, yew trees and demon lovers she could recall, then began to remonstrate with him. Couldn’t he, above all people, with his finer sensibilities and conceptual brilliance, appreciate that this pining after a ghost was so false, so cheap, nothing more than two-penny sentimentality, a poor flimsy excuse for real love and loyalty? And she asked him, humbly and sincerely, if he wouldn’t accept gratefully a poor loving heart that he had mutilated beyond all thinking. He was the one in the wrong, couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see all she was offering him, in spite of the condemnation of that pitiless and cheaply moralizing society that made her an outcast for the “sin” of loving him? Even as she wrote, absorbed, distracted, resentful and brimming with love all at once, she felt the strength come back to her.
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She wouldn’t go to Taliesin if he begged her. She couldn’t. “Because a spirit walked abroad there whose presence must not be offended by one who truly loved him.” She went on in this vein, dredging up every Gothic reference to churchyards, yew trees and demon lovers she could recall, then began to remonstrate with him. Couldn’t he, above all people, with his finer sensibilities and conceptual brilliance, appreciate that this pining after a ghost was so false, so cheap, nothing more than two-penny sentimentality, a poor flimsy excuse for real love and loyalty? And she asked him, humbly and sincerely, if he wouldn’t accept gratefully a poor loving heart that he had mutilated beyond all thinking. He was the one in the wrong, couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t he see all she was offering him, in spite of the condemnation of that pitiless and cheaply moralizing society that made her an outcast for the “sin” of loving him? Even as she wrote, absorbed, distracted, resentful and brimming with love all at once, she felt the strength come back to her.
“I SHALL WIN!” she exclaimed. “You’ll see! When the smoke of battle clears away I shall be a rainbow again—and, undying name—an altar of fire that you have tried to dash to hell. I shall weave a rose wreath and hang it round your neck. You will call it a yoke of bondage and curse it—no matter. You are afraid of the light I give you. You crouch in darkness. Come, take my hand, I will lead you.” And her valediction, intimating in its restraint whole worlds of love and grief and passionate regret, was, simply,
Miriam.
Miriam.
And then she arrived, shriven, on the high altar of the west, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos. She went barefoot in the mornings. She worshipped the sky. Took
eau naturelle
and unleavened bread. Wrapped herself in diaphanous things and let Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy apply their healing touch to her soul. Time was a mountain. Waters flowed, the wind blew. She watched the eagles rise on the thermals over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as if they held all the power of the universe in their wings—or perhaps they were vultures, but no matter. She was there. She lived in the moment.
eau naturelle
and unleavened bread. Wrapped herself in diaphanous things and let Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy apply their healing touch to her soul. Time was a mountain. Waters flowed, the wind blew. She watched the eagles rise on the thermals over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as if they held all the power of the universe in their wings—or perhaps they were vultures, but no matter. She was there. She lived in the moment.
Gradually, his letters softened. Guilt ate at him—he’d seduced and abandoned her when she’d given up everything for him, even to the opprobrium of society, and he understood that now and begged her forgiveness. He sent money. He needed her. Wanted her. Pleaded with her to come back to him—and not just to Chicago, but to Taliesin, to be its mistress. And she? She let him dangle, reveling in her power to reach out to him across all that expanse of raw country and tighten the clamps of her hold on him. So what if it was venereal? He needed her. And he would see what she could give him beyond that, beyond the curse of sex—and yes, she threw the phrase right back in his face. They would walk the world together, she wrote him, hand in hand, stride for stride, and challenge the very gods for their sublimity.
By July, she was back in Chicago. By the end of August, she was at Taliesin.
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CHAPTER 4: FLESH AND BLOOD
H
e was lonely, that was the long and short of it. Despite the fullness of the days at Taliesin and his utter absorption in the work going forward, despite the company of his children and the ministrations of Mother Breen, despite riding and farming and picnicking and charades and board games and singing round the fire at night till he thought his lungs would burst, he was parched for the touch of a woman. Miriam was right. Mamah was a ghost, dead and gone, and you couldn’t lie with a ghost. The thought might have been callous—Mamah hadn’t been in the ground a year yet and already she was as faded in his memory as if she’d been gone a century, and perhaps that was a trick of the brain, a defense mechanism, a way of loosening the coils of grief so they didn’t choke all the air out of your lungs and drain the blood from your heart—but all he could see in his mind’s eye was Miriam. Miriam undressing by candlelight, teasing him, flaunting herself, perching naked on the corner of the bed and pulling him down atop her, Miriam with her breasts exposed over the sweet silken curve of her abdomen, her dress in tatters, crying
Look at me, I’m flesh and blood, flesh and blood!
e was lonely, that was the long and short of it. Despite the fullness of the days at Taliesin and his utter absorption in the work going forward, despite the company of his children and the ministrations of Mother Breen, despite riding and farming and picnicking and charades and board games and singing round the fire at night till he thought his lungs would burst, he was parched for the touch of a woman. Miriam was right. Mamah was a ghost, dead and gone, and you couldn’t lie with a ghost. The thought might have been callous—Mamah hadn’t been in the ground a year yet and already she was as faded in his memory as if she’d been gone a century, and perhaps that was a trick of the brain, a defense mechanism, a way of loosening the coils of grief so they didn’t choke all the air out of your lungs and drain the blood from your heart—but all he could see in his mind’s eye was Miriam. Miriam undressing by candlelight, teasing him, flaunting herself, perching naked on the corner of the bed and pulling him down atop her, Miriam with her breasts exposed over the sweet silken curve of her abdomen, her dress in tatters, crying
Look at me, I’m flesh and blood, flesh and blood!
Well, so was he. And he found himself burying his face in her letters to catch the faintest scent of her, all the while wondering what she was doing out there in New Mexico—had she taken another lover, was that it? She was a matchless beauty, elegant, brilliant, worldly, and if he’d seen nothing like her in Chicago, what must the hidalgos have thought of her out there under the open sky? He pictured her in the arms of a tall mustachioed figure in a sombrero, some sunburned hybrid of Tom Mix and Teddy Roosevelt, and felt the loss of her like a physical ache. But then it
was
a physical ache when you came right down to it. And he soothed it in a way that was juvenile, unclean and lonely, lonely to the core.
was
a physical ache when you came right down to it. And he soothed it in a way that was juvenile, unclean and lonely, lonely to the core.
He was there at the station in Chicago when she stepped off the train in a fumarole of porters, bags and scuffling shoes, the engine spewing cinders and ash, steam rising and pigeons settling like an avian snow, people crying out, families reunited, lovers embracing—even a pair of Alsatians wagging their tails and capering for joy—but she didn’t seem to recognize him, not at first. Down the platform she came in a magnificent stride that was at once commanding and unabashedly sensual, the Negro porters scurrying to keep up with her and a whole series of men glancing up from newspapers and cigars like dominoes toppling one against the other all the way down the line. He felt the blood drain from his extremities and settle in that one essential place—he knew those eyes, those limbs, those breasts—but didn’t she know him? Didn’t she recognize him? He started forward, his confidence wilting, wondering if she was still harboring a grudge—or was it her eyesight? She was of an age—and she did employ that lorgnette as something more than a prop . . . “Miriam!” he cried, his voice cracking under the strain even as he lurched out from behind a wall of anonymous men hunched over their cheap suitcases and made himself glaringly visible, his stick raised high and his cape flowing in the liquefaction of its folds. She stopped. Turned toward him. He tore the beret from his head and waved it wildly. And then? Then she was in his arms.
“How was your journey?” he asked, leading her out to the street and the car as the porters brought up the rear and the searing summer air streamed in through the open doors.
“Oh, darling, darling, you don’t want to know.”
“Was it that bad?” He tried out a smile, ready to make light of it, but his blood was seething, the very touch of her, the scent . . .
“Heat,” she said, never missing a stride, and then she was directing the Negroes as they loaded her things into the car. “Like this. Heat like this. Only worse. There was the dust, eternal dust, and people so inconsiderate—and I hate to say it, stupid, stupid and thoughtless—as to leave the windows open wide day and night. Insects. I could write a treatise on the insects of the West and Middle-West. But let’s not talk about me, let’s talk about you. You look thinner. Or thicker. Definitely thicker about the waist. Have you put on weight? Is the life in the country”—and here she gave him her first smile—“so restful, then? Unclouded days, sap running in the trees, the easeful sway of the hammock? All that?”
He was off then, off on a speech of his own, settling into his rhythms like a jockey feeling the stride of his mount on the stretch run, gabbling on about the structural problems they were encountering, the vagaries of his workforce, the lay of the stone they were quarrying and the quality of the lumber from the mill, not to mention the fluidity of the design and the changes of conception he was making daily, and Paul Mueller, of course, Paul’s contributions, and the Japanese, how they were becoming increasingly cordial in their communications and how certain he was that the big project was going to go through. They were halfway across town before she stopped him. “Well,” she said, giving him a coy look from beneath the wide floral brim of her hat, “didn’t you miss me?”
He had. He did. The blood shot to his groin again. And then the next speech was spinning out of him with all the fluidity and spontaneous grace he’d inherited from his preacher father.
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He was indicting himself, begging her forgiveness and forbearance, pledging fealty and love and unraveling a whole spool of excuses, when she stopped him again. “Oh, that’s all very gratifying,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the racket of the motor and the yapping of some sort of mongrel or other that had been chasing behind the wheels for the past block and a half, “but where are you taking me?” Another look from beneath the shade of the hat. Her smile was full now, her eyes dancing, lips swollen. And licked. Licked wet with the pink retreating tip of her tongue. “And for what purpose?”
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He was indicting himself, begging her forgiveness and forbearance, pledging fealty and love and unraveling a whole spool of excuses, when she stopped him again. “Oh, that’s all very gratifying,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the racket of the motor and the yapping of some sort of mongrel or other that had been chasing behind the wheels for the past block and a half, “but where are you taking me?” Another look from beneath the shade of the hat. Her smile was full now, her eyes dancing, lips swollen. And licked. Licked wet with the pink retreating tip of her tongue. “And for what purpose?”
He fumbled a moment, the open wound of Taliesin still lying bloody between them, and the oratorical flow, the sheer dance of words, stuttered short. “I, well, I thought we’d, maybe—if you have no objections, that is, and I know you must be exhausted—”
“
The Garfield?” she said, and the way she said it, so casually, so gracefully, so lewdly, made it the most exciting thing he’d ever heard.
The Garfield?” she said, and the way she said it, so casually, so gracefully, so lewdly, made it the most exciting thing he’d ever heard.
“No,” he said, grinning, and for the first time since they’d got in the car he reached out a hand to touch her intimately, on the upper thigh, where the material of her dress had pulled tight beneath her when she slid into the seat. “I thought the Congress.”
Two days later—and what choice did he have?—he moved her back into the little house at 25 East Cedar Street and did his best to overlook her moods and dietary peculiarities, her florid speeches about art and literature and her continued insistence that he sit for a marble bust. He hadn’t time to sit for a bust, he kept protesting (gently, ever so gently). He was a working architect, preoccupied with the business of the world. And busts, in any case, were for dead heroes, for military men and the like. No, she countered, not at all—what of Rodin’s bust of Balzac? Of Hugo? Granted, they were in bronze, but marble was for the ages—as he was. He might have told her it was architecture that was for the ages, but he kept the thought to himself. What he wanted, above all, was harmony, and he was determined to establish it this time around, to give as well as take, because he’d suffered the long withering attrition of her absence. If he had to nurture her, if he had to put up with a pillow here or there and eat French food once in a blue moon, what of it? She was his star, his torch, his impetus. Was he in love? He couldn’t say. But she was on his arm when he went to the concert hall, when he went out to dine or simply take the air, and she was there in his bed at night, as warm and loving and virtuosic as any man could ever hope to ask or dream.
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