“I once heard a story about Wright having lost an object of his own on the property during construction, a talisman of some kind, something that meant a great deal to him. And then years later he bent over backward to save that building twice from demolition. But now he’s no longer here to do it….” Mrs. Sharpe’s voice lost its dreamy tone, and she looked at Petra with a twinkle. “At least, we don’t think he is.”
Petra looked back at her, but couldn’t quite smile. What was she talking about? Wright’s ghost? And what was a talisman?
“Calder and I saw something odd in the windows of the house yesterday — kind of a shadow, and then a light that ran through the glass and blew Calder’s pentominoes over.” Petra’s words hadn’t come out right. It all sounded silly, but Mrs. Sharpe didn’t laugh.
Her voice soft, she said, “Yes, those windows communicate. And I’ve heard stories over the years about people and odd lights being seen in the house at night. Ghosts wouldn’t be surprising, given the history of the place. Having been built for a family, and for children in particular, its fate has been all wrong.”
Petra nodded silently, her mind racing. She said, “Have you seen any ghosts?”
She fully expected Mrs. Sharpe to close the topic with a bang, but to her surprise, she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Not there.”
“Oh,” Petra said, hoping she wasn’t going to stop. “Umm — where?”
Mrs. Sharpe pushed the plate of cookies toward Petra, and she obediently took another.
Then Mrs. Sharpe said, “Something I saw one summer, when I was about your age. We were on Nantucket Island, in Massachusetts.”
Petra put down the cookie. She remembered now that both Mrs. Sharpe and Ms. Hussey had family from Nantucket. Did Ms. Hussey know this story?
Mrs. Sharpe went on: “My parents had rented an eighteenth-century house on the edge of a graveyard. There were latch doors that opened on their own, and sometimes we heard footsteps, but I don’t remember feeling scared. People on the island are matter-of-fact about ghosts. The fog, oddly enough, frightened me more. Every evening it surrounded the house, swirling and drifting and catching in trees, and then there was the mournful sound of the foghorn.”
Petra shivered, but Mrs. Sharpe didn’t seem to notice.
“I slept by myself in a bedroom on the first floor. One night I awoke to see the shadowy figure of a young girl kneeling in a corner of the room. She seemed to be struggling to pry up a floorboard. I remember she had braided hair, and what looked like a long, loose gown. She didn’t seem to know I was there, even when I made a noise, and she finally faded and disappeared.
“My first instinct was to try to help her. In the morning, my sister and I lifted the wide board where she had been kneeling. There were dead spiders and thick cobwebs as if nothing under the floor had been disturbed for a long time, and beneath that was a little notebook bound in leather.”
Mrs. Sharpe got slowly to her feet, held up one finger, and left the room. When she returned, she had something in her hand.
The leather was dry and desiccated. The paper was wavy, and the ink inside had run until the words were mere blobs and stains.
“Oh, how tragic!” Petra burst out. “Nothing you can read!”
“Impossible, sad to say. Paper must have been soaked.” Mrs. Sharpe looked tenderly at the little book.
“And you took it?” Petra asked.
“I thought maybe she wanted me to. But I did put something back under that board — my copy of a book called The Invisible Man. I remember it made some uncomfortable ideas seem very real, and to this day I can’t look at a pansy without thinking of it.”
“What?” Petra squawked. “Pansies! I’m reading it right now! The Invisible Man, I mean.”
Mrs. Sharpe raised one eyebrow, as if the coincidence wasn’t a surprise. She said calmly, “I wanted to give the ghost a message, to let her know that I believed she was real — sometimes visible and sometimes not.”
“Why do you suppose I found two copies of The Invisible Man, in two different places, just before you told me this story?” Petra asked.
Mrs. Sharpe was standing now, signaling that the visit was over. “Good luck in your work on the Robie House,” she said stiffly.
“But — I was going to ask you about whether you know any secrets that might help to save the house,” Petra said quickly.
“How many secrets can you learn in one day?” Mrs. Sharpe said in a cryptic voice. “I think you have everything you need.”
After the door closed, Petra stood outside for a moment, blinking in the late afternoon sunshine. Perhaps it was the cookies and sugary iced tea, but her mind felt like a runaway Ping-Pong ball. On the walk home, she bounced from ghosts to The Invisible Man to Frank Lloyd Wright making a walk-in kaleidoscope and leaving a tali-something behind him….
As she passed Calder’s house, she glanced down at new cement filling a cracked section of the sidewalk. Five lines looked almost as if they spelled I M — a kid scratching with a stick, she told herself, but the words “Invisible Man” ricocheted back and forth in her mind.
How many secrets can you learn in one day? I think you have everything you need.
Everything I need, Petra thought. What has Mrs. Sharpe given me? And why wasn’t she surprised about me reading The Invisible Man?
Return to “Do the Wright Things”
Ms. Hussey could barely be seen the next morning as she opened the classroom door. Balanced on one shoulder was a hefty stack of poster board, and on the other a gigantic cardboard tube. Hanging from one arm was a bucket of scissors. A plastic bag filled with bottles of glue was clamped under one elbow. Her sixth graders rushed to help her unload.
She had her I’ve-got-a-secret look and wouldn’t answer questions until the class was seated.
“After you left school yesterday, I realized that we need to do exactly what you suggested: destroy some paintings. I rushed downtown to the Art Institute store, and when I told them you kids were trying to save the Robie House by doing this project, they practically gave me thirty different posters of famous works in their collection. This morning I borrowed the rest of these supplies from the art room. Note the scissors and glue. Now what exactly do you think we’re going to do?”
“Cut and paste!” shouted a delighted voice.
“Back to kindergarten,” mumbled Denise.
“I get to choose first!”
“No, me!”
Ms. Hussey’s hands went up as if she were stopping traffic. “What’s this about?”
“Chopping up art, of course,” someone piped up.
“Right,” Ms. Hussey beamed. “Sacrilege. Desecration. Appalling destruction. First we all glue the posters to the cardboard so that they’re stiff. Then I thought each of you could pick one image and cut a vital chunk off the side of it, the worst chunk you can imagine, so that it’s clear that you’ve done a terrible thing. Then …” Ms. Hussey paused. “Then I’m not sure what the next step should be.”
“No!” Tommy’s voice was awkward and excited, and everyone looked at him. “I mean, we should cut this stuff up in front of the people we want to upset. You know, the murder idea — seeing a haystack being cut off is worse than seeing the painting in two pieces afterward. It’s more violent.”
Calder’s pentominoes were already on his desk. “Tommy’s right,” he said. “Make them witness it!”
“Yeah!”
“Art blood-and-guts!”
Ms. Hussey looked around. “I don’t want us to get gruesome here, but I have to agree. It’s an extraordinary action,” she said slowly. “After school today I’ll call press, TV, anyone who will record this, and let them know that a group of Hyde Park children have a plan to save the Robie House, and that there will be a public event. This kind of attention is the very thing that could bring in the money to save the house.
“We only have three more days of school, but I’m sure we can be ready by tomorrow. You should all stand on the sidewalk
in front of the house, each with a painting in hand, and then start in with the scissors, one of you at a time so that we get the full horror of the idea.”
By the end of the morning, a stack of famous images leaned against the blackboard. Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte was next to Edgar Degas’s The Millinery Shop, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks was next to Pablo Picasso’s Man with Moustache, Buttoned Vest, and Pipe, and Henri Matisse’s Woman Before an Aquarium sat near Paul Gauguin’s Polynesian Woman with Children. The door opened at one point, and the principal, who was leading a tour for prospective students and their parents, looked around with a puzzled expression and murmured to the group, “We’re big on art here.” The sixth graders nodded cheerfully. As the door closed, Ms. Hussey winked at them.
While the class peeled dried glue off elbows and knees, she said, “Can you keep a secret?” There was a roar of yeses.
“For now, not a word to anybody about what we’re going to do. Got it? I know it’s difficult, but sometimes it’s important to withhold information.”
Tommy swiveled in his chair and looked triumphantly at Calder, who stuck his tongue out. Both were thinking about the stone fish.
“But what if someone official finds out we’re planning this? Can they stop it?” Petra asked in a worried voice.
Ms. Hussey shook her head. “I think we’ll be okay as long as we don’t cross that ‘Do Not Enter’ tape. Plus, there will be press watching, which usually makes possible bullies behave better. And kids, as we all know, never do anything wrong.” Ms. Hussey smiled beatifically.
The class could hardly wait.
Thursday, June 9, was exactly what the sixth graders had hoped for: clear and warm, with a thoughtful breeze. It was an ideal day for a demonstration.
As the class marched around the corner of Fifty-eighth Street, headed for the Robie House, they stopped momentarily when they saw the TV cameras and the parked vans with press and newspaper lettering along the sides. Ms. Hussey turned around and called softly, “Don’t let them see you’re nervous!”
A crowd of at least sixty people had gathered in the street around the house, and the police, who had been informed ahead of time, had blocked off the area with sawhorses. Parents had all been invited, and many could be seen peeking over the heads of press.
The sixth graders stood in a long, straight line in front of the house. Each held up a large painting.
One by one, they stepped out of the line and introduced themselves and the piece of art they were holding. Ms. Hussey had told them to say whatever they wanted about it.
When Petra stepped forward, she said, “I’m Petra Andalee, and this is Henri Rousseau’s The Waterfall. He painted it in 1910, the same year the Robie House was finished. I like this painting because it’s jungly and mysterious and the leaves and plants seem almost like they’re breathing. If I do this to it” — she paused and hacked vigorously at the painting, cutting two people in half — “does this change what you see? Do I have two pieces of art, or one crime?”
Calder held up a square, abstract painting. “I’m Calder Pillay, and this painting was made in 1935 by Piet Mondrian. It’s called Composition Number 1, Gray-Red. As you can see, it’s all rectangles divided by black lines. There are two gray rectangles, one small red one, and the other eleven are white. Every rectangle is a different size, and there is something very perfect about the way they fit together. A lot of the Robie House is made of careful rectangles. If you cut the painting like this” — Calder paused to chop his way across the poster board — “do you think it’s the same? Of course not. And if the Robie House is cut up …” Calder paused. “It’s easy to imagine what a waste it would be.”
Other sixth graders explained that they liked the people having a summer picnic on an island, then cut a jagged line separating the group; or that they admired the woman dressed in the ball gown before she lost her head; or that they liked the beach scene before the water was chopped out.
The testimonials and the destruction rolled on, and the only sounds coming from the crowd were an occasional gasp or sniffle. It was, as Ms. Hussey had anticipated, a memorable and moving sight.
When it was Tommy’s turn, he said, “I’m Tommy Segovia, and I’ve grown up mostly in Hyde Park. I think the Robie House is a piece of art just like this painting by Vincent van Gogh. It’s called The Bedroom, and he painted it in 1889. I like it because it’s comfortable and has blue walls, a green floor, two yellow chairs, a red blanket, an open window, and everything’s at a crazy angle. If I cut the room in half, look what happens.”
Tommy hacked away and then held up the two pieces of the image. “Destroyed. Why is this any different from cutting up Frank Lloyd Wright’s art? The Robie House was built to make kids happy, and the kids who lived in it never forgot it. They loved all the sunshine, and they loved running in and out and up and down. People say it’s a building that feels kind of alive, and we think so, too, and if you don’t try to save it, you’ll be witnesses to a” — he looked hesitantly at Ms. Hussey, then plunged on — “to a murder.”
There was a stunned silence, and then someone began to clap. Soon, it seemed like the entire crowd was applauding, press and all. Tommy looked dazed but happy, as if he wasn’t sure where all those words had come from. Kids in the class patted him on the back and picked up the pieces of their posters and waved them in the air.
As the class headed back toward school, Tommy could barely feel the ground beneath his feet. Sixth graders who hadn’t said a word to him since he’d returned were being friendly. Even Denise smiled at him. He sucked in his cheeks so many times that morning that they hurt.
Petra, walking by the side of the house, found herself thinking, See? We kids care. We won’t give up on saving you. Looking at the empty windows, she felt a bit frightened by her own promise. Could she keep it?
Calder, glancing back at the house, saw Henry Dare on the corner with a cane. He wanted to wave, but the mason’s head was turned. Had Mr. Dare listened to their speeches?
Just then Calder thought he heard a silvery voice, a voice with a slight echo, coming from the garden by the house. “Stay and play!” were the words that drifted through the morning light. Wasn’t that what Mr. Dare had heard when he fell? Calder looked around quickly, his heart pounding, but no one else seemed to have heard.
When Calder glanced up once more, the Robie House windows looked dark and sad, reflecting back only the shiny yellow of the “Do Not Enter” tape.
The demonstration had been a triumph. On the front of the Chicago Tribune the next morning was a picture of Tommy Segovia holding up half of the van Gogh, his mouth wide open. “A Murder Is Announced in Hyde Park,” the headline said. Tommy couldn’t wait to get to class.
As he hurried around the side of the Robie House on his way to school, a man in construction gear stepped over the yellow tape into the middle of the sidewalk. Tommy was just trotting around him when he said, “Hey! You the kid in the paper?”
Tommy nodded and grinned, ready for praise. He’d seen his class on the news last night, heard them on public radio, and had now seen himself on the front of one of the biggest newspapers in the United States.
“I wouldn’t be so proud of myself if I was you,” the man growled. He had glasses with a heavy black rim and thick lenses — his eyes looked small and mean. Startled, Tommy took off at a run, something his mom had taught him to do if he ever found himself alone and in a situation he didn’t like.
At the end of the block he looked back and was startled to see the man still standing on the sidewalk. Arms crossed on his chest, he scowled in Tommy’s direction.
As sixth graders high-fived him all morning, Tommy forgot about the nasty exchange in front of the Robie House. He’d never felt as popular.
At lunchtime Ms. Hussey, looking like a happy rose in layers of pink, made an announcement: She had just heard from the principal’s office that a group made up of the mayor of Chicago, an official from the National Trust for H
istoric Preservation, the president of the University of Chicago, and several big-shot attorneys were going to be visiting and evaluating the house next week.
“Although school will be out by then, this is thrilling news,” she said. “Mission partially accomplished: We’ve attracted attention, and now if the house is pulled apart, the museums involved will have to think carefully about what they’re accepting.”
To celebrate, Ms. Hussey ordered pizza for lunch, even though that was supposed to be the prize when the paper feet completed their march around the classroom walls. They could have taken the time to connect the feet, but as she said, the class had covered more important ground.
She didn’t seem to mind that they hadn’t finished the last twenty pages of the spelling or math book, and that they’d worked on nothing but Robie House ideas for the last week.
Tommy was beginning to think that Ms. Hussey was one awesome teacher, and that fighting for the Robie House might be the best thing that had ever happened to him.
He wasn’t going to give up.
School ended for the year on Monday, June 13.
The transition from school into summer was always bittersweet for Calder. Freedom to do what he wanted and the weeks of unplanned days and no-homework nights were all good, but his household was quiet. During July and August the neighborhood felt too peaceful to him; university students left, and many kids went off to camp. Calder’s parents didn’t believe in camp. And then there was Petra and Tommy, who would both be home, too. Calder wasn’t sure this was a good thing.
On the last morning of school, kids cleaned out desks and lockers and filled grocery bags with old papers, half-dead erasers, and notebooks. Lost gloves materialized, and overdue books went back to the library. Before dismissal, Ms. Hussey called everyone together in the back of the room. The sixth graders sat on the floor in a large circle.
“Before you leave, I’m going to pass around my Lucky Stone.” The gray rock that always sat on her desk now filled the palm of her hand.
The Wright 3 Page 8