The Women (33 page)
“Yes?” he said, utterly bewildered. Was she lost? Anile? A charity case?
“I’m here to work,” she said, her voice booming out at him as if she were shouting from across the street. She already had a hand on the door, was already pushing her way past him and into the house.
“But what are you doing?” he demanded. “Who are you?”
She stood there a moment, scanning the room, muttering under her breath. Then she set down her bag—and now he saw it, an ear trumpet—and started gathering up the plates in a way that was almost comical. But it wasn’t comical. It was an intrusion. An irritation. He took her by the arm, the flesh there surprisingly firm, and wheeled her around. “Listen, ma’am, madam, you can’t just—”
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 assistant 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 unanchored 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. Waller
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was out of money, flat and busted, and that was that. There were gaps everywhere, art glass 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?
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was out of money, flat and busted, and that was that. There were gaps everywhere, art glass 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, née 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 mass 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.
’
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 mass 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 reasserted 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, assuring her that he was rebuilding for her, so that she and Aunts Nell and Jane could be with him permanently,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, reassure 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 compassionate 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 Japanese, 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 assured, 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 Japan 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 arrondissement 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:
Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect;
the return address gave a street number and arrondissement 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 shore 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 assuring him that new associations, 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.
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
S
he 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?
he 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,
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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.”
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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.”
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