The Women (39 page)
He’d come in the kitchen door, desiring only a glass of water before pulling on his bathing costume and calling Llewellyn to head down to the lake, and here he was in the docket. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” he said. “Because Miriam—”
“Misunderstanding?” Mrs. Breen had elevated the hearing trumpet and now she dropped it to her side, her attenuated shoulder blades settling like bones in a sack. “To call your mother a meddling old hag? And me. To call me names I wouldn’t call the devil himself? And just because I wouldn’t jump at her every whim and command, because I have a household to run here if you don’t know it and I’m not hired on to be anybody’s handmaid—and who does she think she is to command me like I’m some slave out of her plantation in Tennessee or wherever her glorious ancestors hail from, and yes we all got a good earful of that too.”
“Frank,” his mother cut in. “Frank, now you listen to me—”
He held his hands up in surrender. “I’ll speak with her,” he said, irritated now, angry, all the satisfaction he’d taken in the day’s work driven out of him as if he hadn’t accomplished a thing—Sisyphus, this must be what Sisyphus felt like each time he got to the top of the hill. “Right now. Right this minute. Will that satisfy you? It’s not enough that I’ve worked all day under that sun with the laboring men, slaved out there in this heat, and all I want is to have a swim and some quiet before dinner. No. I have to be the one to make peace, when both of you—” he checked himself. His mother was biting her lip. Her eyes were wet. “Where is she?”
“
Where is she?” Mrs. Breen threw back at him.
“
Where she
’
s been the whole day—in her room. And she won’t let nobody in neither.”
Where is she?” Mrs. Breen threw back at him.
“
Where she
’
s been the whole day—in her room. And she won’t let nobody in neither.”
She didn’t answer to his knock. He tried the knob but there seemed to be something blocking the door. “Miriam!” he called. “Miriam, are you in there?” Nothing. Not a whisper. He went round to the window, but she’d blocked that too, the casement locked, some sort of material—was that the bedspread?—tacked up so that he couldn’t see inside. He felt a flash of irritation.
107
He pounded the glass with the flat of his hand, shouted her name again. People were watching him—two of the masons, on their way down the hill to the tavern, had paused by the garage to take in the spectacle, joined now by one of the housemaids swinging a pail of scraps for the hogs—and he cursed under his breath. Couldn’t he have a little privacy? Was that too much to ask? In the next moment he was at the door again and this time he put his shoulder to it and felt something give—a piece of furniture sliding back and the door cracking open just enough to give him a view of the darkened room.
107
He pounded the glass with the flat of his hand, shouted her name again. People were watching him—two of the masons, on their way down the hill to the tavern, had paused by the garage to take in the spectacle, joined now by one of the housemaids swinging a pail of scraps for the hogs—and he cursed under his breath. Couldn’t he have a little privacy? Was that too much to ask? In the next moment he was at the door again and this time he put his shoulder to it and felt something give—a piece of furniture sliding back and the door cracking open just enough to give him a view of the darkened room.
At first he could see nothing. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw that she’d nailed a series of shadowy objects to the walls, reckless with the plaster and the wood trim too—another flash of irritation—and what were they? Drawings? “Miriam!” he called again, and when she didn’t answer he lunged at the door with everything he had till the barricade—a bureau with the desk and two chairs stacked atop it—spilled forward with a splintering crash that could have wakened the dead, and he was in the room. Which was empty. He flicked on the lamp and the walls sprang to life—drawings, yes, dozens of them, each a sketch of his head as seen from every conceivable angle, the features monumental and rugged, hair snaking beyond the margins and his orbits as deep as Beethoven’s, but with the eyes left eerily null—and what was this? Clothes heaped on the bed as if laid out for a rummage sale, hats and shoes and undergarments scattered across the floor, a smashed teacup, a spill of roofing nails and the hammer with which she’d crucified each of the drawings. Her slippers. Her robe. The vertical plane of the bathroom door.
“
Miriam? ”
Miriam? ”
He pushed open the door, the first stirrings of alarm working through him like a faint electric current, and there she was. Propped up in the tub. Asleep. Or meditating, perhaps she was meditating. Seeking the cool, the dark—she’d had a headache, hadn’t she? That was it, that must have been it. “Miriam?” he tried again.
Her eyes were shut fast, the lids faintly blue, lashes entwined, her head thrown back against the wall—and her mouth, her mouth was slung open over the dark canal of her throat. She was asleep, of course she was, asleep, that was all. His first thought was that she’d been bathing and dozed off, but she was dressed in her nightgown—the material sodden, painted to her limbs—and there was no more than an inch of water in the tub, softly gurgling round the plug. It was then—and it came as a shock, as if he’d been slapped—that he noticed the needle.
A needle. A syringe. The sort of thing the doctor used for injections. It was clinging to the smooth white flesh of her upper thigh, out of place, wrong, deeply wrong, and all he could think of was a parasite, some bloated tick or leech fastened there where it didn’t belong. Without thinking, he wrapped his fingers round the thing—cold metal and glass—and tugged it gently from her flesh, a speck of blood there, a yellowish contusion round the wound, and laid it on the sink. “Wake up,” he said softly, taking her by the wrist. “Miriam, wake up.”
She gave him nothing.
He pulled her toward him, slapped her once, twice, and then again, till her eyes began to flutter, and where were the smelling salts? Did they have smelling salts? Her breath was rank, flowering in his face with the odor of the swamp plants, the cattails and pickerelweed and the other things that grew with their feet in the water of the pond. He was frightened, his thoughts charging one way and then the other. Should he call the physician? His mother? Mrs. Breen? But this was a private matter, wasn’t it? Between him and Miriam? Some mistake with her medicine, nothing to worry over, really, but shouldn’t she be in bed?
He clasped her to him then and tried to lift her, dripping, from the tub, but she was surprisingly heavy, her limbs slippery, fish-cold, and it was a job to shift her weight and gather her up. Her head fell forward across his shoulder, her hair pressed wet to his cheek, and with a final sucking contortion she was in his arms and he was edging out the door and her lips were moving. “Frank,” she murmured, “what is it? What are you doing?”
Something grabbed at his feet—one of her balled-up dresses—and he nearly stumbled.
“Frank.” Her voice was stronger now, the voice he knew, Miriam’s voice, piqued and challenging. “Put me down. What are you thinking?”
His lower back was on fire suddenly and he very nearly dropped her in that shambling half-hobbled moment, but he made it to the bed and let go of her even as she rolled away from him and the mattress gave with a long hissing groan.
“Miriam, for God’s sake,” he said, standing over her, breathing hard, his shirt wet and his eyes jumping in his head till they felt like ball bearings. “This, this
needle
—”
needle
—”
She’d sat up against the headboard, her arms wrapped round her knees. Wet, the hair fell across her face like strands of moss, like Spanish moss, and what was he thinking, where was he? “My medicine, Frank,” she said. “You know how ill I am. You know I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, and that any, any”—her voice thickened, dredged with emotion—“
upset,
any cruelty or animosity is bound to, to . . .
destroy
me . . .”
upset,
any cruelty or animosity is bound to, to . . .
destroy
me . . .”
He could only stare at her. He was utterly bewildered, adrift without oars or rudder, the seas piling and shifting beneath him. “I know it’s difficult,” he heard himself say, “but this heat won’t last forever . . .”
“They have to go, Frank.” Her voice was steady now, aimed true, homing on him. “Both of them.”
For a moment the room was silent and he could hear the distant percussion of the axe on the chopping block, one of the workers splitting wood for the stove, and then the sudden harsh crackling shriek of a jay, so close it might have been in the room with them. He was grappling with the pronoun, third-person plural.
Them?
Them?
“It’s them or me, Frank. Them or me.”
CHAPTER 5: THE LOVE BUNGALOW
I
f that was how they wanted to play, rough and tumble, cats with their claws drawn, well, she could play at that game too. For three full days she lay in that sweltering room, in the dark, while Frank pleaded with her and the little half-witted housemaid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, ugly as a turnip and graceless and stupid into the bargain, brought her iced tea, lemonade and cakes. Plenty of time to brood, and brood she did. The gall of that crone, Mrs. Breen, that bag, that sack of bones with her lace-curtain Irish accent tripping around as if
she
were the lady of the house—and what had she had the effrontery to say in response to the simplest request for a salad properly dressed and a sandwich of cold chicken with a bit of mayonnaise and a slice of cheese that didn’t stink of the barnyard? “I’m nobody’s handmaid, ma’am, and if you want your victuals outside of the regular dining hours you’ll just have to help yourself like anybody else.”
Victuals. Dining hours.
It was all she could do to stop herself from snatching the hearing trumpet out of the odious reptilian claw and snapping it over one knee.
f that was how they wanted to play, rough and tumble, cats with their claws drawn, well, she could play at that game too. For three full days she lay in that sweltering room, in the dark, while Frank pleaded with her and the little half-witted housemaid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, ugly as a turnip and graceless and stupid into the bargain, brought her iced tea, lemonade and cakes. Plenty of time to brood, and brood she did. The gall of that crone, Mrs. Breen, that bag, that sack of bones with her lace-curtain Irish accent tripping around as if
she
were the lady of the house—and what had she had the effrontery to say in response to the simplest request for a salad properly dressed and a sandwich of cold chicken with a bit of mayonnaise and a slice of cheese that didn’t stink of the barnyard? “I’m nobody’s handmaid, ma’am, and if you want your victuals outside of the regular dining hours you’ll just have to help yourself like anybody else.”
Victuals. Dining hours.
It was all she could do to stop herself from snatching the hearing trumpet out of the odious reptilian claw and snapping it over one knee.
And the mother. There was an old dragon crouching over her hoard if ever she’d seen one. From the very instant they’d laid eyes on each other, in that exquisite living room with all of Frank’s things on display as if it were a museum—and it was, it was a museum, as fine and profoundly moving as any in the world—there’d been a mutual antipathy. A chill. As if a wall of ice, a thousand-year-old glacier, had sprung up between them. Frank had escorted her into the room on his arm and before she’d had a chance to catch her breath—all that rare beauty—his mother was there like one of the risen dead, tall, bony, white-haired, with a scouring look in her eye and a mouth that clamped shut so tightly it was a wonder she had any teeth left.
“Enchantée,”
Miriam had murmured, taking her hand, but the old woman said nothing in reply, merely looking to Frank and commenting, in the sort of tone she might have used while kicking the mud from her boots, “So this is the Parisian?” Only then did she look Miriam in the eye. “Or should I say, Parisian by way of Tennessee?”
“Enchantée,”
Miriam had murmured, taking her hand, but the old woman said nothing in reply, merely looking to Frank and commenting, in the sort of tone she might have used while kicking the mud from her boots, “So this is the Parisian?” Only then did she look Miriam in the eye. “Or should I say, Parisian by way of Tennessee?”
Three days. To hell with them. To hell with everybody. She’d rather be back in Taos if it came to it, free of all this embroilment and animus, and she closed her eyes against the void of the ceiling and saw herself gamboling through a field of wildflowers in the cool pellucid sculptor’s light of the high mountains, her arms outspread, the pure white silk dancing round her on the breeze. But Frank wasn’t in Taos, Frank was here. This was his abode, his refuge, his poet’s tower shining out over the waste-land of boorishness and diminished taste, and her place was beside him. And he was concerned for her, she could see that, his face heavy, his voice soft and chagrined, the most caring man in the world. He must have come twenty times a day to inquire after her—Did she need anything? Was she feeling better? Wouldn’t she like to come in to dinner?—and at night he let all his need spill over her.
In the darkness, as they lay there side by side, she praised him, praised his vision and his genius and the way his great and giving soul was reflected in the beams that rose over them and the holy space he’d created within. She took his hand. Squeezed it. And gave praise, because praise was her main theme and her modus, but there was another theme here and it began to emerge even as his breathing slowed and the night wheeled overhead. “Frank,” she whispered, “Frank, are you awake?”
Snatched from sleep, his voice thick: “I’m here.”
“Your mother, Frank. And that dreadful housekeeper. I cannot”—her voice rising—“
will
not endure this sort of abuse much longer. Who is to be the mistress of this house? Tell me that, Frank. Tell me.”
will
not endure this sort of abuse much longer. Who is to be the mistress of this house? Tell me that, Frank. Tell me.”
On the evening of the third day she emerged from her room in time for dinner, taking her place at the table beside Frank as if she’d been sitting there amongst them each night since the roof had been raised and the table brought in through the door. This time—and she didn’t give a damn whether anybody liked it or not—she entangled herself in the conversation, letting no point pass unchallenged, whether it had to do with politics, pasturage, Paris fashion or the weather, and she let them know, all of them, Frank’s mother and his grown children, his adolescent boy with the open honest look Frank must once have worn in the long-ago, the draftsmen, the visiting architect and his wife and whoever else was there, that she was the equal of anyone and that from now on the entire establishment would dance to a new tune, her tune, hers and hers only.
She knew something they didn’t. She knew that Nellie Breen would be sent packing within a matter of days, as soon as Frank could find someone to replace her, and that in the morning he’d be having a long talk with his mother, emphasizing the fact that her rooms weren’t yet completed—why, the building itself—and wondering, especially with the season changing and the cold sure to come on soon, if she wouldn’t find it more comfortable back in Oak Park. At least temporarily. And she knew that when she went back into that pinched and darkened room this time it would be only to pack her things up and direct the maid to take them across the courtyard, through the loggia and into Frank’s rooms.
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