by Nancy Horan
“These things take time.”
“I’m weary of it,” Mamah said. “All the talk revolves around getting the vote. That should go without saying. There’s so much more personal freedom to gain beyond that. Yet women are part of the problem. We plan dinner parties and make flowers out of crepe paper. Too many of us make small lives for ourselves.”
“Does my life look like that to you?”
Mamah was taken aback by the question. “No, Mattie. You do important work in this town. You know what I mean.”
MAMAH DROVE MATTIE down the hill that afternoon to a fruit stand she liked.
“So, how were the hordes at the library today?” Mattie asked.
“Lively.”
“Clara Savory is divine, isn’t she?”
“She has been, until I let it slip that I have a master’s degree. She cooled a bit after that.”
“Is she intimidated by you?”
“She hasn’t any formal training, you know. I’ve never mentioned that I ran the library in Port Huron, and naturally, I defer to her. But sometimes I’m able to answer questions she can’t, and that makes her uncomfortable. Before I left today, out of the blue, she said to me, ‘I work from eight in the morning until ten at night. And for that I get eight dollars a month. Along with living quarters, which is a room in a boardinghouse.’”
“Hmm.”
“I haven’t spoken a word about my situation. Is it obvious that I’m at loose ends?”
“It doesn’t matter what Clara Savory thinks. It’s what you’re thinking that interests me.” Mattie’s gaze demanded an answer.
“I suppose I’m trying on Boulder. Seeing if it fits.”
“You’re serious about leaving Edwin, aren’t you?”
“I am. But every time I think about starting a life here, I come up against the hard realities.” Mamah found a parking place and turned off the car.
“Let’s imagine the very best of circumstances. Let’s say Edwin agrees to a divorce and, by some miracle, allows me to have the children most of the time. He agrees to allow us to move a thousand miles away, and he even supports us. I am still a marked woman, even in Boulder. The moment I’m no longer a visiting married woman but a divorcée, even my volunteer work will be in jeopardy. No one wants Hester Prynne running the children’s story hour.”
“Oh, you exaggerate. Boulder isn’t that backward.”
Mamah helped Mattie down from the car and held her arm as they walked to the fruit stand. “Or,” Mamah continued, “let’s say that Edwin allows me to keep the children but supports only them, not me. Now, I must work, since my family money would run out in a year, and that’s stretching it. Never mind that I wouldn’t be invited to the teas you attend. As a librarian, what would I make? Ten dollars a month at best? I’ve spent that much on a hat.”
They waded into the crowd at the stand.
“First of all,” Mattie said, “you would make more money than that. Second, you wouldn’t have to be a librarian. And third, you might consider buying cheaper hats.” Mattie leaned toward Mamah. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” she whispered. “There’s a woman who heads the German language and literature department over at the U. of C., Mary Rippon. Been there for years. Word is out that she’s retiring.” Mattie set down the basket she’d brought. “I was feeling hesitant to tell you, but if you really want to move here, then you should apply for the job. The timing is miraculous, and there’s no one better qualified than you. Alden and I know the president of the university.” Her words were quick with excitement. “And you’re not divorced, not yet. You could say your husband will be joining you later, and after a while, if it doesn’t get patched up with Edwin, well, it wouldn’t matter anymore. You’d be indispensable by then.”
The two women stared at each other under the canvas of the fruit stand. A murmur filled the space as people picked up melons and tomatoes, traded gossip. Beyond Mattie, Boulder spread out and up into the hills, unfolding its possibilities—all the shops and schools and people and rugged geography waiting to be discovered.
“You should get over there immediately, though,” Mattie said as they returned to the car. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
They drove back up the hill, Mattie staring pensively out the side window, until they pulled into her driveway.
“A woman can make her own way here,” she said. “It’s not easy. There are women all over Boulder who do it every day. Mary Rippon’s job may be one of the finer ones, but it’s still hard work. She hasn’t had much of a personal life.
“For the record, Alden works himself ragged. I don’t think men have things any easier than women out here. Everyone works hard. I can’t recall the last time I made a crepe-paper flower.”
“Oh, Mattie! You know I didn’t mean—”
“It’s just…. Sometimes, Mamah, I think you’ve lived a privileged life since you married Edwin.”
Mamah looked down at her shoes, stung.
Mattie patted her elbow. “Living out here will give anyone perspective.”
THE FOLLOWING WEEK Mamah bought a dress and jacket on Pearl Street, something that looked appropriate should she manage to get an interview at the university. Mattie had sent off a letter, and they were waiting to hear something. The August heat was stifling as she walked up the hill toward Mapleton carrying the new dress, eager to show it to Mattie. When she arrived at the house, though, the nanny handed her an envelope embossed with Frank’s emblem, a red square, and addressed to her in care of Mrs. Alden Brown. Mamah slipped out onto the porch to read it.
Mamah,
I write with some trepidation, given our last conversation. It counts heavily against me that you haven’t written, yet I believe your feelings for me have not disappeared. Words were left unspoken when we last met, and my hope now is to clear up any misunderstandings.
I’ve been so consumed with untangling myself here that it may appear I haven’t taken into full account your situation and the high standards of your own intellect and spirit. The fact is, I never thought of you as “following” me to Europe. It is not my intent to seduce you into “breaking free.” All along you’ve told me that freedom is not something that can be conferred on you by someone else anyway. It is something you have inside of you, a way you choose to be.
You’ve talked about your longing to find that thing—that gift—which makes your heart sing. If it’s writing, as you have suggested in the past, might you find inspiration to begin that work in Europe? Consider joining me for a month or two, not as a follower, but as a fellow truth-seeker on her own spiritual adventure.
My plan is to stay in Berlin for as long as it takes me to complete folio drawings for Wasmuth and to make sure that the printing is acceptable. I’m guessing that will be anywhere from nine months to a year. I am leaving here and traveling sometime in late September or early October. You know how I feel. I proceed now, intent upon squaring my life with myself, divorce or no.
My fondest hope is that you will come. I shall happily wait until your friend has had her baby so that you might join me.
If you decide not to come, I won’t judge or conclude that you have chosen against freedom. I hold the deepest respect for you.
Please send me some word. I think of you hour to hour.
Frank
Mamah stroked the heavy paper, smelled it. She carried the letter around the rest of the day tucked in her cotton waist.
His voice was in her ear after that. On Friday she walked to the telegraph office and wired Frank a message.
MATTIE DUE SEPTEMBER 25 . MBB
CHAPTER 14
“Soon,” Mamah said when John asked her when they would be returning home. The boy was agitated often, bored without playmates now that Mattie’s children had begun school. Mamah borrowed textbooks from the Mapleton School and began giving him morning lessons.
The children had changed over the summer, almost by the day. Mamah was grateful for the time with only Martha and John. Sh
e had rediscovered the pleasant intimacy of bathing and feeding them, rituals she’d handed over to Louise long ago. Martha’s tiny feet, such perfect miniatures of Mamah’s own, were no longer baby feet. The skin on her soles had grown thick from playing barefoot outside.
John, who’d looked like Edwin from the start, now walked with a bowlegged gait that reminded Mamah of her father. He had begun to roughhouse, sometimes acting tough. At night, though, he was the same as he’d been since he could talk. He crawled into bed with her and Martha and tugged her sleeve. It was a signal between them; it meant “story.” And always the stories began in the same way.
“Once upon a time, there was a boy named John, a horse named Ruben, and a dog named Tootie.” The stories had started simply enough when he was three or four. Over time they had become more fantastical, peopled with ship captains, sultans and runaway horses, and they always ended with John saving the day in some way. One night in Boulder, when it was clear that Martha was beginning to understand the stories, Mamah had added, “and a little girl named Martha.”
“Noooo,” John had wailed. His sister’s presence in the imaginary world he shared with his mother was too much for him. After that, she took to telling a separate story for Martha.
Perhaps the children’s nerves were as frayed as hers, she thought. Edwin’s recent letters demanded to know what she would do about John returning to school, and when she planned to come home. She sat down twice to respond, but wrote nothing. She thought she had decided, but she wasn’t entirely certain. A tension had been building for weeks, and now her mind changed from moment to moment. It was as if she, too, were waiting to see what would happen.
A short note from Frank arrived on September 20.
I have found a man who is no worry to me who will take over the studio while I am gone, and finish up what is still on the table. The last few weeks have been a rush to assemble drawings to take to Wasmuth. Marion Mahony will stay on to complete drawings to send to me in Germany. I shall be at the Plaza Hotel in New York by the 23rd. Please send some word. I am prepared to wait for you.
Mattie swung slowly on the porch swing opposite Mamah. Her face was white as cream and deadly serious. “What are you thinking of?” she asked.
Mamah didn’t want to agitate her now.
“What?” Mattie persisted.
“Don’t you see?” Mamah plunged in. “How can I know if this is what I should do if I don’t go? If I don’t have time to live over there with him, even briefly? You have a happy marriage. I don’t. You played your cards right the first time. I didn’t. Does that mean I have to play this hand to the bitter end, full of regret? Knowing I might have had the happiest life imaginable with the one man I love more than any other I have ever known?”
Mattie looked exhausted. “You’ve made up your mind.”
“I have.”
A hot gust of wind blew dust around in the yard.
“When will you leave?”
“When I know you are safe.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“A couple of months. I’ll tell Edwin to come and get the children.”
Mattie mopped the sweat off her neck with a handkerchief. “You can leave the children here at the house until Edwin collects them. Alden’s mother will be here, as well as the nanny.”
“It should only be a couple of days.”
Her friend nodded.
“Thank you, Mattie. Thank you.”
ON THURSDAY MORNING, September 23, Mattie began having pains. Alden, who had returned home a week earlier, held her hand. Mamah remembered a week of such pains before she bore Martha, but Alden’s mother, who came daily to look in on her, declared that there would be a baby that day.
“I cannot wait to be free of this bed,” Mattie groused when Alden left the room. “This is the last time I shall ever allow myself to get into this condition.”
Mamah sponged her friend and changed her nightgown. Mattie was difficult to move. Mamah was worried by the fact that she was swollen all over. Her skin had been mottled pink with white spots, like a slice of bologna, for the past few weeks. Just the pressure of a thumb on her arm left a bloodless white print.
In the past two weeks, Mamah had prepared for the moment by cutting gauze squares and assembling clean sheets, a douche bag, tubes, a thermometer, and a clean nightdress. She had been through it twice herself, attended a half-dozen other births, knew the routine. But she had also watched her sister Jessie bleed to death. When Mattie’s moans grew louder, the doctor appeared and Mamah retreated to the parlor with Alden to wait. Outside the window, maple leaves shimmered gold in the fall sunlight.
By nine that night, Mattie proved her mother-in-law correct. “You have yourself a girl,” the doctor said when he fetched Alden. Mamah stayed downstairs, relieved, while Alden raced up to see his wife. She rocked in her chair, remembering John’s birth, how miraculous she’d found such a commonplace moment. She and Edwin had giggled with joy over the boy’s miniature blue-veined hands, his tiny, tiny fingernails.
Martha’s birth had been different. With the baby wrapped in a blanket and lying on her belly, Mamah had waited until Edwin left the room before she brought the child up to her breast. This time she had not wanted to share the moment with him. She had counted the baby’s fingers and toes, moved her palm over the girl’s tiny head, savoring that pleasure alone. He could not have understood what she felt, she’d thought at the time. She didn’t.
“ALDEN SAYS ’MARY.’ Do you think it’s too plain?” Mattie lay nursing her day-old baby.
“Let him have his way. We’ll give her her real name.” Mamah smiled. “You two look beautiful lying there. She looks just like you.” She felt a pang and busied herself folding little clothes so she wouldn’t cry.
Mattie looked up. “Have you told Edwin you’re leaving?”
“I’m sending a telegram today.”
Mattie’s brown eyes moved over Mamah’s face. “So it’s Monday you’ll leave.”
“Monday.” Mamah took a deep breath. “I’ll bring the children over here Sunday. We’ll stay in the guest room that night, if it’s all right with you.”
“Yes.”
“I expect Edwin will be here in a couple of days. Are you sure your nanny and Alden’s mother can manage?”
“Yes. The children are no problem.”
“Forgive me for bringing my troubles into your home, especially now. I never intended to make you complicit in this.”
Mattie’s gaze was on the baby as she shifted her to her other breast. “There’s not a word I can say to you that you have not already thought of, Mamah.” She gently teased the baby’s mouth with her nipple, trying to get her to take it. “There are ways to hold the thing up in the light and see a hundred facets, and knowing you, you’ve found a hundred and one.” She looked up. “Go. See if you’re supposed to live with this man. And if he’s as enthralling in a nightshirt in two months as you think he is now, then come back and set it right. Do right by Edwin and the children. Allow a decent amount of time, and do a divorce properly.”
Mamah leaned down and kissed the infant’s forehead, then put her cheek to Mattie’s. “Bless you,” she whispered.
On Sunday morning, Mamah followed Mapleton down the hill and over to Water Street. At the Union Depot, she went to the Western Union counter.
“Your husband is coming,” the clerk said. Mamah realized the man was addressing her. “On Wednesday,” he said, cheerfully handing her Edwin’s telegram.
A streak of rage shot through her. It was probably impossible not to read the telegrams that came into the office. Still, the content of people’s private correspondence was supposed to be inviolate.
“I need to send another.” She took a form on the counter and filled it out. “Frank Lloyd Wright, Plaza Hotel, New York. ‘Leave tomorrow. M.B.B.’”
The man picked up the message form and read it. He took a pencil from behind his ear and scratched his head. Then he turned to her, his face puzzl
ed.
She fixed him with a cool gaze. “Is there a question?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. He turned back to the telegraph machine.
Her ears burned as she waited to see that the message was sent. The man began tapping out her words in irretrievable dots and dashes.
When he was finished, Mamah walked across the lobby to the railroad agent’s window and bought a ticket.
BACK IN MATTIE’S SPARE BEDROOM, she composed a letter to Edwin, then slid it into the desk drawer.
“Papa is coming this week,” she told the children as she prepared them for bed.
Martha held up her arms to have the nightgown pulled down over her. “I want to go home,” she whined.
“He will be so amazed to see how big you are, Martha. You, too, Johnny.” Mamah spoke slowly. “Now, listen carefully. I’m going to leave tomorrow to go on a trip to Europe. You will stay here with the Browns until Papa arrives in a couple of days. I’m going on a small vacation.”
John burst into tears. “I thought we were on one.”
Mamah’s heart sank. “One just for me,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “Louise and Papa and Aunt Lizzie will take good care of you while I’m gone. And Grandma is visiting there now. Oh, she’s going to be so glad to see you again.”
John clung to her, whimpering. She rubbed his back, held him. “This has been hard for you. I know that, sweetheart, being away from Papa and Oak Park for so long. But you’ll be back in school with your friends in only a couple of days. And I won’t be gone long.”
Mamah lay down on the bed and pulled their small curled bodies toward her, listening as John’s weeping gave way to a soft snore.
At dawn, numb from lack of sleep, she rose to pack her bags. She stumbled around in the dim morning light, trying to make no sound, discarding some things into the wardrobe while stuffing others hurriedly into the jumbled confusion inside her bag. She reached into the desk, removed the sealed letter, and put it next to Martha’s shoes on the bedside table where it would be found. Looking back to be certain the children were still asleep, Mamah slipped out the door.