The Women

by T. C. Boyle

  Just when she’d begun to give up hope, when she found herself going down to dinner with her face discomposed from sobbing into her two cupped hands for what seemed hours at a time, when the pravaz went dull and she thought the rain would never let up, Mr. Jackson telephoned to report that Taliesin was hers. He’d arranged for a court order granting her admittance—those workmen had no right to keep her off her own property, no right in the world, and the court had come down firmly on her side—and he offered to drive her all the way up to Wisconsin himself. She could take possession of the place, move things in, do anything she liked with the artwork, the furnishings, the livestock. She could cut down the trees, drain the lake, sell off the corn, fire the staff wholesale and let the dust and cobwebs accumulate till the place looked like the catacombs under one of those old churches in Italy. If it struck her fancy, she could board up the windows, order a dozen Victorian loveseats, hang doilies from the famous cantilevered eaves. And Frank could do nothing to stop her.

  This time when she stepped out of the car, there was only Billy Weston at the gate. She stood there glaring at him under the hellish sun, enduring the mud and the insects and the assault of rural odors while Mr. Jackson handed over the papers and the two conferred. Even then, Billy stalled. He had to go up and telephone to Mr. Wright’s lawyer, he said, and, infuriatingly, made her wait there at the locked gate while he ambled up the hill, disappeared into the house for a good ten minutes, and then ambled down again. “Only her,” he said, addressing Mr. Jackson as he turned the key in the padlock and grudgingly pulled back the gate. “That’s what the papers say, only her. Not you.”

  She felt strange coming up the drive, everything so familiar—the crunch of the gravel under her feet, the shadows, the angles of the buildings, the way the courtyard opened up like a pair of welcoming arms—and yet different too. How long had it been? Two years—better than two years. But Frank never stood still, that was for sure. He’d been busy since the fire, she could see that, new roofs sprouting over the living quarters, the back buildings more elaborate, more fully integrated into the whole. And the house was beautiful, she had to admit it. There was an aura of peace about the place, everything so still and ageless, and she had a thrill of recognition that took her all the way back to her years in Europe and the first time she stepped into the arching recesses of the Pantheon or St. Peter’s Basilica. She was wrought up, of course she was, but the simple transparent beauty of the place had a calming effect beyond all thought of confrontation and loss, and the memories came back to her in a rush.

  There may have been a lock on the gate, but there were no locks on the doors—Frank didn’t believe in keys53—and she passed through the courtyard and slipped in the main entrance. It was like plunging into a pool, cool and mysterious, the stone pillars burnished with an aqueous light, the wood glowing as if it were wet, and everything silent as a dream. He wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. Nobody was. All those rooms, all that empty space, and not a soul around, not even the servants. For a long while, Miriam hesitated at the door, breathing in the scent of the place, orienting herself—Frank was gone, vanished, and he’d ducked out on her again, the coward, the bastard, the little man—and then, gradually, it came to her that it was better this way, and her heart decelerated and her breathing slowed, and step by step, she entered deeper into the house and began to explore.

  Every detail, every change, leapt out at her,54 and it was almost as if the flesh of a new house had been stretched over the bones of the old—and it had, because all this had been burned, but for the stone itself, hadn’t it? She ran her hand over the rough pillars to feel the grit there, sat in the chairs, took in the views out the living room windows like an interloper, a thief of views. The more she explored—or was she snooping, was that what it was?—the more agitated she became. She saw the new carpets, the furniture, new artwork to replace the old. He’d been extravagant here, sparing nothing, and all the while pleading poverty to the court. But then he was just a two-bit schemer, wasn’t he? A liar and a skinflint. He took from the rich and gave to himself and he didn’t give a damn about anybody so long as he got what he wanted.

  She moved through the house like a detective in a dime novel, examining everything, the canned food in the cupboard, the table set for an uneaten meal, the dirty plates in the sink, the unmade beds—he’d decamped in a hurry, she saw that, but it gave her little satisfaction. There were the sheets in the master bedroom, sheets that smelled of him—yes, she raised them to her face—and something else too, another presence, her, Olgivanna, the usurper in her husband’s bed. For a long while she sat there on the edge of the bed, her mind ranging so far that she forgot all about Mr. Jackson waiting for her at the gate and Billy Weston, whom she was going to sack the minute she had the opportunity, and all the rest of the toadies and ingrates too, and she might have stayed there till night came down but for the two very sympathetic gentlemen from the Bank of Wisconsin, Madison, who knocked meekly at the door to inform her that her husband was in arrears on his mortgage, which, sadly, had been inflated by the rebuilding loan, and that they were foreclosing on the property forthwith.

  Unless, of course, she, as co-owner, could come up with the sum owing.

  And how much was it?

  Twenty-five thousand on the mortgage, plus a further chattel mortgage of $1,500 and liens for unpaid bills of $17,000, totaling, in all, $43,500.

  She invited them in, apologizing because she was unable to offer them anything under the circumstances, and she sat there in Frank’s grand living room with its gleaming treasures and baronial views, staring numbly at them, thinking first of her pravaz and then of Frank—he’d outmaneuvered her again, that was what he was thinking. Wherever he was. Out of the country, no doubt. Living in a cheap hotel where no one asks any questions. Maybe he was wearing a false beard—that would be funny, Frank in a false beard like some baggy-pants comedian on the vaudeville circuit. He thought he’d put one over on her. Thought he was having the last laugh. But he’d lost Taliesin and Taliesin was his life. And he stood to lose a whole lot more any day now. Because what he didn’t know was that Mr. Jackson was also representing the little Russian’s husband—Hinzenburg—and that the husband had brought adultery charges against him. And more: he was suing Frank for $250,000 for alienating the affections of his wife and daughter, filing a writ of habeas corpus for return of the child and offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for capture of the fugitives. Even then, even as she sat across from the lip-licking bankers and let her gaze rest on one of Frank’s precious Chinese Buddhas, the sheriff of Sauk County, Wisconsin, was circulating photographs of him. And of her. And of the child.

  Yes. And who was having the last laugh now?

  CHAPTER 7: NOT A DANCER

  Olgivanna hadn’t spoken with the reporter, hadn’t admitted he was alive and breathing and standing there before her, his hands in constant motion and his face rearranging itself around every plea and provocation. She blocked her ears too, rising swiftly from the chair, taking Svetlana by the hand and marching straight into the house to close the door firmly behind her and instruct Mrs. Taggertz to send word down to Frank so that Billy Weston and the others could escort the man from the property with whatever degree of physical persuasion they deemed necessary. But the incident had its effect. For weeks she was afraid to leave the house, even to sit in the courtyard, though Frank tried to reassure her—he’d instructed the men to keep a lookout and he swore he’d have any and all trespassers prosecuted, “whether they’re newspapermen or gypsies or Bible salesmen”—and she found herself growing paler and weaker by the day. Just to get out, just to free herself of all the little irritations of the household, the baby’s colic, Svetlana’s moods, Frank’s all-encompassing presence, she found herself roaming the fields at night, in the fastness of the dark, and when the mosquitoes came to suck her blood it was almost a relief.

  Very gradually, as spring deepened toward summer, she began to regain her strength. She felt it i
n her legs first, her calves hardening ever so perceptibly and the long muscles of her thighs and groin stretching to accommodate the pace of her nightly rambles. In the mornings, even before the sky began to shade to gray beyond the windows, she forced herself from bed and out into the garden, though she was weakest then, coughing with a persistency that alarmed her—and cold, cold all the way through, as if she’d never warm up again. But the garden needed tending, that was what she told herself. The peas and green beans were drowning in weeds, the tomato and pepper seedlings were delicate still and the sweet corn was at its most vulnerable, and while she slept a whole army of rabbits, gophers, beetles and caterpillars crept out to the feast. She didn’t eat, didn’t brew a pot of coffee or a cup of tea or even rinse her mouth with water from the pitcher on the stand beside the bed—she dressed in the dark in an old skirt and sweater and went straight out into the silent breath of the morning while the children were asleep still and there was nobody to see her.

  Once the sun was up, she came in for breakfast, Frank already at work in his studio, Mrs. Taggertz feeding the children, the workmen hammering and measuring and sawing away at the perpetual revivification of Taliesin. She ate then—a soft-boiled egg, a slice of toast, coffee with cream and sugar—and afterward, if she had the energy, she sat with the baby and put Svetlana through her paces, an hour of dance, an hour at the piano, readings from the poets, drawing, painting, calligraphy.55 In the afternoons, she slept. And in the evenings, after Mrs. Taggertz had served dinner and the baby had been put to bed and she’d sat reading in the living room with Svetlana and Frank, she went back out to the garden, furtively, rising from her chair as if she were going to the kitchen or the bathroom and slipping out the door into the gathering dark. Moonlit nights were a blessing, the hoe an extension of her hands, her arms, her shoulders, one task leading to another until it was eleven, it was midnight, and still she was at it, the work consecrating her in routine. She spread the soil, paid out the hose, bent and clipped and dug, and the world of the reporters receded like a ship leaving the dock in a very dense fog.

  By June, she’d begun to relax. The telephone rang still, rang continually, but she learned to ignore it. She put on weight—a pound or two, at any rate. Her complexion improved. Frank complimented her on her looks. She even began, tentatively, to sit out in the courtyard again without feeling as if she were being spied upon and twice she took Svetlana down to the lake to feed the ducks in broad daylight. And then one evening, as she played with the baby in the living room while Svetlana skipped rope outside the door with a rhythmic slap as regular as a heartbeat and the smell of fried ham and potatoes and onions rode a current of air from the kitchen, she happened to glance out the window to see a number of motorcars pulled up at the front gate. Absently, she rose to her feet and crossed the room to get a better look. There was a gleam of glass and metal, the roofs of the cars mirroring the sun in neat oblong sheets, movement there, people—men in hats—gathered in groups of two and three, as if they were looking for work.

  Or a story. A newspaper story.

  Her first reaction was to shrink back from the windows, though they couldn’t possibly see her at this distance, could they? She went to the bedroom next, not to hide herself like a scared child—she was angry suddenly, and she’d never hated any class of people in her life the way she hated these professional snoops and meddlers and why couldn’t they just leave them alone?—but to fetch the binoculars from the table beside the bed. She wanted to be sure. Wanted to know her enemy. And then she would call to Frank and Frank would send the men down to confront them and everything would go on as before.

  She came back into the room in a crouch, gave a glance to the baby, who was preoccupied with a stuffed toy in the middle of the carpet, sensing nothing, knowing nothing, then went down on all fours and crawled to the window. The scene jumped at her in magnification, the lake a slap of color, the lawn crying out till every blade of grass came starkly visible, the gate trembling and then sliding into focus. She saw Billy Weston there, his back to her, and two of the other men with him. And then the newspapermen, their hats creased, ties askew in the heat. There was a shout, muffled by the distance and the interposition of the glass, the noise startling a flight of ducks up off the water to wheel over the house and throw a pulse of shadow across the room, and it was then that she saw there was someone else there too, a figure in motion—a woman—bending, rising in violent pantomime, bending again.

  It was Miriam. It had to be. She was certain of it even as she shifted the binoculars to focus on the woman’s face, but then the figure ducked out of view, erased momentarily by the torsos of the converging men before coming up triumphant to fling something down in the dirt in a dull blur of color. Another shout. The men smirking. Easing forward. A photographer there, setting up his tripod, the sun exploding against the windows of the cars and the woman whirling away from them all to stamp furiously at that thing in the dirt as if she were killing it. Only then did she stand still long enough to reveal herself.

  Olgivanna had seen Miriam in the flesh just once—in the corridor of the hospital—but she must have studied the photographs of her a hundred times, fixated on her, fascinated, every line of her rival’s face as familiar to her as her own, and now here she was, unmistakable, Miriam in all her belligerent glory, come to claim her own. She recognized the pug nose, the set of the jaw, the clamped insatiable mouth and the outsized hat slipped down over the eyebrows—and the eyes themselves, so startled and wide it was as if she’d been pricked with a pin every minute of her waking life. It gave Olgivanna a strange thrill to see her this way, reduced at the end of a long optical tunnel, flattened and derealized, but it was short-lived. Any minute now—she was sure of it—Billy Weston would stand back and Miriam would pass through the gates and sally up the drive with her horde of reporters, and what then? Would they have to run out into the fields and hide? Crawl under the beds? And where was Frank?

  Svetlana’s rope beat and beat and beat again, echoing through the open door that gave onto the courtyard. There was a dull ringing from the direction of the kitchen, the cook rapping a spoon against the lip of a pot. And Olgivanna, absorbed in the spectacle of Miriam, forgot all about Pussy until something came crashing down behind her and she spun round to see the baby tangled up in the cord of one of Frank’s lamps, the glass shattered, the frame bent56—Frank would be furious, that was her first thought—and Pussy expelling the first startled shriek of breath. Panic swept over her then—the electricity, the shards of glass—and she dropped the binoculars, sprang to her feet and snatched up her daughter and she didn’t care who was watching. In the next moment she was in the corridor, Pussy raggedly wailing—startled, but no blood, and the lamp hadn’t hit her, had it?—and calling for Frank in a voice that was a bitter distillate of rage and fear and impatience. “Frank! Frank! Where in God’s name are you?”

  He was in his studio, drawing, always drawing, no matter what the crisis, and he looked up sharply when she burst in on him—the children, especially bawling, red-faced infants, were strictly interdicted from distracting him while he was working because how could she expect him to earn a living if he was to be forever interrupted every time Svetlana skinned her knee or the baby passed gas?57 “What is it now?” he demanded.

  “What is it?” she threw back at him, even as Pussy’s screams climbed up the register and then stalled while she spat up a pale sour wad of pabulum on her mother’s shoulder. “Have you looked out the window? It is that woman. Your wife. Miriam. She is here”—she felt the warm seep of the baby’s fluids through the fabric of her dress, and it would have to be washed now, and Pussy’s dress too—“right outside at the gate. With, with, I don’t know—reporters! They look like reporters.”

  He didn’t get up from the desk, didn’t offer to take the baby, didn’t even bother to turn his head and look out the window to the sloping lawn that gave onto the lake and the meadow and the gate crowded with cars. “I’m aware of the situation,”
he said in a quiet voice.

  Aware of the situation? She was stunned. And though she was a linguist, though she had French and Russian at her command in addition to her native language, as well as her English, which, if heavily accented, was nonetheless perfectly fluid and intelligible, she didn’t know what to say. He was aware—and he was just sitting there?

  His face was composed, his eyes locked on hers even as the baby kicked and struggled and let out a thin mewl of protest, and she could see that he was willing himself to stay seated, to project an air of coolness and indifference—for her sake. So as not to alarm her. He let out a sigh. “It seems Miriam has been up to her mischief. She claims to have some sort of court order—I’ve been on the phone to Levi58 over it—but I can guarantee you that she’ll never set foot on this property again, no matter what it takes. I’ve got both roads blocked. And Billy’s in charge. You know Billy. He would die before he’d give us up.”

  “Court orders? What sort of court orders? What do they say?”

  “It’s nothing. Legal wrangling, that’s all.”

  “Yes, and that is what you are telling me with the reporters too, till that horrid man from the newspaper came here, and—I don’t like it. I hate this, Frank. I hate it.”

  “Now listen,” and he was out from behind the desk now, moving across the carpet to her, to take her and the baby in his grip that was like the grip of a Titan, a hero who could hold the whole world up in his two arms, “there’s nothing to worry over, nothing, nothing at all.”