The Women (57 page)
The man was waiting for her in the entranceway, just inside the door. He was in his twenties or perhaps early thirties, in an ill-fitting suit in some sort of checked pattern, and his tie was sloppily knotted. He gave her the smile of a small child presented with a rare gift. “Mrs. Wright?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered, giving him a puzzled look in return. And though she had a premonition that whatever he wanted would be unwelcome—she could see it in his eyes, a flutter of superiority, as if he knew something she didn’t—she heard herself say,
“
Won
’
t you come in?” She led him to the inglenook and the fire laid there. The light was dulling outside. A wind scattered leaves across the yellowed remnants of the lawn. It was November seventh, a date she would never in all her life forget.
“
Won
’
t you come in?” She led him to the inglenook and the fire laid there. The light was dulling outside. A wind scattered leaves across the yellowed remnants of the lawn. It was November seventh, a date she would never in all her life forget.
“Well,” he said, moving forward to warm his hands over the fire while she stood there rigid and Catherine edged into the room, lifting her eyebrows in consternation, “I don’t want but a minute of your time.” He extracted a notepad and pencil from his pocket and turned to her. “My name is Adler, Frederick Adler, and I’m from the
Tribune
.” He paused a moment to let the weight of the association sink in. “And I was just curious—we were; that is, my editors and I—if you had anything to say. For the record, that is.”
147
Tribune
.” He paused a moment to let the weight of the association sink in. “And I was just curious—we were; that is, my editors and I—if you had anything to say. For the record, that is.”
147
“To say?” she echoed. “Concerning what?”
“Your husband.”
The smallest tick of unease began asserting itself somewhere deep inside her. She felt a vein pulse at her throat. “My husband? What about him?” And then—she couldn’t help herself—she made a leap of intuition and knew that he was dead. Or injured. Gravely injured. She saw the crushed bone, blood on the pavement. Her eyes jumped to her daughter’s. “He isn’t—?”
The man’s expression hardened. “Is he at home?”
“Why, no. He’s away on business. Has been these past . . . why, is anything the matter?”
“No,” he said, “no, nothing at all,” and Catherine, poor Catherine, gave her a look that made her feel as if she were being roasted over the coals by a party of savages with bones stuck through their noses. “I was just hoping for some”—and here he reached into the folds of his coat and extracted a newspaper, the
Chicago Tribune
, and handed it to her as if it were a copy of the Bible to swear on before the judge—“clarification.”
Chicago Tribune
, and handed it to her as if it were a copy of the Bible to swear on before the judge—“clarification.”
The headline screamed at her, mute letters, black and white, but screaming all the same, loud as the siren at the firehouse: ARCHITECT WRIGHT IN BERLIN HOTEL WITH AFFINITY. And the subheading, in a louder pitch yet:
Mrs. Cheney Registered as Wife.
Mrs. Cheney Registered as Wife.
Just then the telephone rang. It was all she could do to hold on to the paper, to keep from dropping it to the floor, flinging it into the fire, shrieking out her rage and hate. “Catherine,” she said, struggling to control her voice, “would you please see who that is.” And she watched her daughter’s every step as she crossed the room, made her way to the telephone in the hall and lifted the receiver. Only when Catherine was gone, when she was out of range—and harm’s way too—did Kitty turn back to the reporter. She lifted her head even as she unconsciously retreated a step so that her back was to the mantel and the inscription Frank had carved above it, TRUTH IS LIFE,
148
because what she was about to say wasn’t the truth at all. “Yes,” she said, “yes, he wrote us just last week from his publisher, Wasmuth Verlag, to say that he would be detained there in Berlin while working up the drawings for his portfolio.”
148
because what she was about to say wasn’t the truth at all. “Yes,” she said, “yes, he wrote us just last week from his publisher, Wasmuth Verlag, to say that he would be detained there in Berlin while working up the drawings for his portfolio.”
She drew in a breath. The man was scribbling something in his pad, eternal words, her official statement, her testimony. But she wasn’t done yet. “Of course,” she went on, “there must be some sort of mistake. You see, Mrs. Cheney—she’s his client, you know—Mrs. Cheney is in Colorado.”
Two days later, the phone ringing so continuously she had to disconnect the wires to keep from going mad and the children slinking about as if they’d been whipped, afraid to show their faces in their own house and as glum and pale and put-upon as she was herself, she agreed to meet with the newspapermen. If only to put an end to the siege they’d laid. They were everywhere, as ubiquitous as flies, a whole host of them swarming over the property no matter how many times she sent the maid out to ask them to leave—she’d glance up from the stove to see some stranger gesticulating from the street, cross the living room and find herself staring into the face of a man waving a notepad and mouthing speeches from the flowerbed. People were peering in at windows and ringing the bell day and night till she thought she would have to disconnect that too just to silence the buzzing in her head.
She’d canceled her kindergarten. Kept her own children out of school to spare them—and that was the cruelest thing. To think that her children had to be sullied in this way was intolerable—how could he have done this to them? How could he have been so selfish? Frances was in tears—the whole class was reciting “Hiawatha” and the teacher had warned that each of them, no matter how shy or reluctant, had to be present and have his or her lines committed to memory or let the whole group down. “But, Mama, I have to go,” she kept insisting. “I have to be Minnehaha. And, and”—she broke down, twelve years old and sobbing her heart out, “Roger McKendrick is Pau-Puk-Keewis!” Catherine’s life was disrupted. And John’s and David’s too, the school abuzz with whispers, and she could picture it all, the cruelty of youth, conversations dying as they entered the room, fingers pointing, eyes snatching at them . . .
But she had to put those thoughts strictly out of mind because the reporters were gathering downstairs and she wouldn’t fall into their trap, she promised herself that. They wanted scandal, they wanted the vituperative housewife, the madwoman scene, but she wasn’t going to give it to them. She combed out her hair—and it was her glory still, the color of a new copper penny and without a single streak of gray to tarnish it—and dressed herself in one of the straight-lined gowns with the Dutch collar he’d designed for her, the blue one, to complement her eyes. It was his dress, his mark on her, and she would wear it proudly, modestly, and answer their questions without bitterness or irony. He was her husband and she would defend him, no matter what it cost her.
The bell—the infernal bell—rang and rang again while she dressed and it kept on ringing until Reverend Kehoe came to knock softly at the bedroom door. He’d been kind enough to offer his services as intermediary, greeting the reporters at the front door and leading them austerely down the hallway and into the playroom, the largest public space in the house and its domestic heart.
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She’d decided on facing them here, rather than the living room or Frank’s studio—it was a playroom, after all, devoted to family and built for the children by their loving father, who was no philanderer, no deserter, but a soul led astray by the forces of temptation. Though she was sick at heart and sick in her stomach too—she’d brought up her breakfast not an hour ago—that was the line she was going to take.
149
She’d decided on facing them here, rather than the living room or Frank’s studio—it was a playroom, after all, devoted to family and built for the children by their loving father, who was no philanderer, no deserter, but a soul led astray by the forces of temptation. Though she was sick at heart and sick in her stomach too—she’d brought up her breakfast not an hour ago—that was the line she was going to take.
She pulled back the door and the reverend stood aside for her. “They’re ready for you,” he said, his eyes flaring with conviction in the darkness of the hall even as the clerical collar cut a ghostly slash beneath his chin. He was the father of eight, deeply pious, rigid as iron. She’d sat through his dull droning sermons over a decade of Sundays as he picked away at the fine points of biblical exegesis, gave to his charities, attended various stifling teas and bake sales at his behest—or his wife’s—and now he was here to repay her. He was a minister of God and he was going to stand by her side throughout this ordeal, because she had no husband to support her, not any longer. Was this the way it was going to be, living like a widow the rest of her days? Or would Frank tire of Mamah and come back to her? She had a fleeting vision of him bent over a plate of dumplings in some Prussian palace with bear rugs on the floors and stags’ heads arrayed over the fireplace, Mamah sipping champagne from a crystal flute and throwing her chin back to laugh her rippling carefree laugh that was calculated to freeze every woman to the core and make every man turn his head.
“Are you quite all right, Catherine? Are you prepared for this?”
“Yes,” she said, so softly she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.
“Because we can cancel it. Just say the word and I’ll send them all home.”
But she had to go through with it, had to do what she could to meliorate the situation, put an end to the rumors and speculation—for her children’s sake and her own too. And for Frank’s. The children needed to go back to school. She needed to go about her business. And though she felt like an outcast, felt as if she were walking into a public stoning and wanted to be anyplace else in the world, she told him no and strode into that room with her spine straight and her head held high.
150
150
“Mrs. Wright!” one of them called out, but the reverend silenced him with a glare and she wouldn’t look at them, so many of them, utter strangers gathered here in the inner sanctum of her house with the sole purpose of destroying her and her family, and they were hateful to her, no better than murderers, all of them. She took a minute to compose herself—whiskers, all she saw was whiskers, a rolling sea of facial hair—and in a clear unflagging voice began reading from the statement she’d spent the better part of the past two days composing.
“My heart is with my husband now,” she began. “He will come back as soon as he can. I have a faith in Frank Lloyd Wright that passeth understanding, perhaps, but I know him as no one else knows him. In this instance he is as innocent of wrongdoing as I am.” Was her heart slamming at her ribs like a spoon run round the bottom of a pot? Were they all, to a man, giving her looks of incredulity, distrust even? It didn’t matter. Because these were her words and they would report them, that was what they were there for, that was their purpose, their function in life—to report. They’d reported the dirt gleefully enough and now they could report the sweeping clean of it too.
The room was very quiet. One man tamped his pipe against the palm of his hand and made as if to rise and dispose of the ashes in the fireplace, but thought better of it. She glanced to the windows, wishing she could float up across the room and escape like a vapor, but they were shut and locked, dense with a strange trembling light, as if a biblical flood had in-undated Oak Park while she’d been speaking, the silent waters seeping in till they were all of them sunk here forever. Perhaps it was that thought—the thought of water abounding—that made her realize how thirsty she suddenly was. She swallowed involuntarily, swallowed everything, fear, hope, shame, and went on.
She talked about Frank’s struggles as a young architect who’d come to Chicago with nothing and become the great man he was through hard work and application, about how his present predicament was simply another bump along the road, one he was fighting to overcome with all the fierceness of his will. “Frank Wright has never deceived me in all his life,” she said, and believed it too, at least in the grip of the moment. “He is honest in everything he does. He is the soul of honor.”
There was a silence. She could see that they were all trying to digest this last bit of information, their faces strained and flummoxed. And then they started in with their questions, Reverend Kehoe recognizing first one and then another. “Are you planning to start divorce proceedings?” a man in front wanted to know, and she answered him spontaneously, passionately, with real conviction, as if she’d become a convert in the course of these past ten minutes and had never in her life had an untoward thought for her husband. “Whatever I am as a woman,” she averred, “aside from my good birth, I owe to the example of my husband. I do not hesitate to confess it. Is it likely then that I should want to commence court action?” And she assured them that he’d be back once he was able to master himself and win the battle he was now heroically fighting on her behalf and on behalf of his children. And that when he returned—and this she truly believed, the passion of the moment aside—all would be as it had been before.
“But what of Mrs. Cheney?” a rangy insolent young man in the rear wanted to know, and who was he? Mr. Adler. The one who’d broken the story and caught her unawares in her own house. Well, she wouldn’t be caught twice, that was for certain.
“Yes, what of her?”
“When he comes back—your husband, that is—how will she fit into the picture?”
Here it was: the moment of truth. She could see them all take in a breath. There was a collective flipping back of note pages, a tightening grip on the stubs of pencils. This was what they’d come for.
Mamah, showy Mamah, with her dance hall laugh and high tight girlish figure, rose up and tripped through her consciousness, and she very nearly slipped up, but she didn’t. “With regard to Mrs. Cheney,” she said, and Reverend Kehoe gave her a sharp glance, which she ignored, “I have striven to put her out of my thoughts. It is simply a force against which we have had to contend. I never felt I breathed the same air with her. It was simply a case of a vampire—you have heard of such things?”
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