The Women (9 page)
“What’s it like, Mama?” Svetlana would ask every few minutes and she would try to summon the place—it wasn’t the château at Fontainebleau, outside of Paris; it was a rambling tawny stone bungalow of the Prairie Style on the outskirts of Spring Green, Wisconsin, and it would necessarily have to be self-sufficient in terms of its culture and amusements. “You’ll like it,” she said. “You will. It is—I don’t know—like a castle, only without the turrets.”
The pencils flew over the page, good high-quality tracing paper that wouldn’t tear through. Svetlana took a moment to finish what she was doing—red for the chimney of the house she was tracing, black for the smoke—and then she lifted her face. “What are turrets?”
“You know, towers—like in ‘Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ ”
“Like in France.”
“Yes, that is right. Like in France. Only this place—Daddy Frank’s place—doesn’t have any of them.”
“What does it have?”
She wanted to say it had beauty, it had genius, soul, spirit, that it was the kind of house that made you feel good simply to be inside it looking out, but instead she said, “It has a lake.”
“For ice-skating?”
“Mm-hmm. And in summer”—she tried to picture it, the fields come to life, the barn doors flung open and the cattle grazing, fireflies in the night, constellations hanging overhead in the rafters of the universe—“we can swim. And take the boat out. And fish too.”
“Are there ducks?”
“Sure there are. Geese too.” She was guessing now, running ahead of herself as the train rolled through the deep freeze of the countryside, twenty below zero, thirty below, the rivers like stone, the trees in shock, not a living thing moving anywhere in all that loveless expanse. “And swans. Swans that come right up to you and take the corn out of your hand. Remember those swans in Fontainebleau—the black ones?”
Svetlana stopped drawing now, two pencils—the green and brown—bristling from the knuckles of her left hand, the red one arrested over the chimney even as the roof spread wide to enclose the stick figures she’d drawn beneath it: two of them, just two, mother and daughter in matching triangular skirts. Her eyes went distant a moment and maybe she was seeing the swans, Lionel and Lisette—that’s what they’d named them, wasn’t it?—or maybe she was just tired. What she said was: “Are we almost there yet?”
Frank and Kameki were waiting on the platform to greet them, their breath streaming, hats cocked low, collars pulled up high. They leaned into the wind, their eyes searching the windows of the train as it slowed with a seizure of the brakes, and then Kameki turned aside and cupped his hands to light a cigarette and Frank started forward, the skirts of his heavy twill cape fanning and fluttering round the tight clamp of his riding breeches and the sheen of his boots. He was right there, so close she could have reached out and touched him, but somehow he didn’t see her, and the train slid past him before it jerked to a halt just up the line. Svetlana couldn’t contain herself. She sprang up on the seat and pounded at the window, calling out his name over and over until finally he looked up and saw them and his face changed. Olgivanna waved then, her heart lifting.
But there was something wrong, she could see that the minute she stepped off the train. Frank was as brisk and energetic as ever and he was wearing his broad welcoming smile as he helped first her and then Svetlana down from the train, and yet he seemed distant. He didn’t look at her, not right away, and that was strange. He bent instead to Svetlana, gave her something, a sucker, and asked if she’d had a pleasant trip, but Svetlana, the drawing book clamped under one arm and Teddy under the other, was shy suddenly and could manage only a whispered “Yes.”
A savage wind swept the platform, crushed leaves and bits of refuse skittering before it, the sky roiling overhead, and Olgivanna had a moment to take in the deserted streets and battened-down buildings of the town—village, hamlet—where she’d be spending the immediate future and maybe longer, much longer, before he did look at her. The engine exhaled with a long shuddering hiss of steam. Kameki hustled off after the baggage. And Frank finally did acknowledge her, but he didn’t take her in his arms, didn’t kiss her—instead he held out his hand for a firm handshake, his glove to hers, as if she were a business acquaintance or a distant relative . . . and still he hadn’t said a word, not a word, not
hello
or
welcome
or
I’m glad to see you.
hello
or
welcome
or
I’m glad to see you.
He dropped her hand then and leaned forward with a quick dip of his shoulders. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he said in a low voice, his breath caught up in the wind and gone. “It’s the neighbors. The papers. We can’t have a fuss.”
“Daddy Frank,” Svetlana cried, tugging at his scarf—and she’d recovered herself now, oriented to the cold and the moment of arrival and the town that wasn’t worth a second glance—“can we go see the swans?”
He seemed to wince at the sobriquet—Daddy Frank,
Daddy
—his eyes jumping from Svetlana to her and back. The smoke of the engine twisted in the wind and drove at them, harsh and poisonous. Something caught in her eye and she blinked. “Swans?” he repeated. “What swans?”
Daddy
—his eyes jumping from Svetlana to her and back. The smoke of the engine twisted in the wind and drove at them, harsh and poisonous. Something caught in her eye and she blinked. “Swans?” he repeated. “What swans?”
“I have told Svetlana”—and she was dabbing at her eye with her handkerchief—“that we would see the swans on the lake—and the ducks too.”
“Oh, yes, yes, the swans. Of course, honey, of course we will. But not now, not till summer. Now we have ice. You like ice, don’t you?”
“Can we go skating? Today? Right now?”
But Frank was distracted—two men in overcoats were disembarking now and behind them a beanpole of a boy who immediately snatched at his hat to stabilize it—and he didn’t answer. His eyes kept darting from Olgivanna to the far end of the platform where Kameki was in receipt of the trunk, the porter sliding shut the door and the conductor giving two admonitory toots of his whistle, and then, even as he said, “Yes, yes, certainly, Svet, once we get settled,” he suggested they wait in the car, out of the wind.
The car
21
—long and sleek, with a canvas top, and was it new, was this the car that had picked her up in December?—stood at the curb, engine running, Billy Weston behind the wheel. It wasn’t till they were inside it, the door shut firmly behind them and Billy hurrying off to lend a hand with the trunk, that he gave her the embrace she’d been waiting for—and a kiss from his cold, cold lips. “God, it’s great to see you and to have you here—and you, Svet, you too, you’re going to love it—but you’ve got to understand, well, you know how this community is, all the hens clucking and the newspapermen warming up the road for us . . . you know what I’ve been through—”
21
—long and sleek, with a canvas top, and was it new, was this the car that had picked her up in December?—stood at the curb, engine running, Billy Weston behind the wheel. It wasn’t till they were inside it, the door shut firmly behind them and Billy hurrying off to lend a hand with the trunk, that he gave her the embrace she’d been waiting for—and a kiss from his cold, cold lips. “God, it’s great to see you and to have you here—and you, Svet, you too, you’re going to love it—but you’ve got to understand, well, you know how this community is, all the hens clucking and the newspapermen warming up the road for us . . . you know what I’ve been through—”
She didn’t say anything. And she couldn’t imagine what this was all about. Had she misread him, was that it? Was he rescinding the invitation? Was all the talk of love just another fantasy? She ducked his gaze to dab at her eye—soot there, a speck of coal dust.
“So we’ve concocted a fiction, and it’s nothing to me, really, you know how I feel about these biddies meddling and gossiping and trying to control people’s lives—what I mean is, I’m telling people you’re the new housekeeper.”
She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “A Serb. Another impoverished immigrant, is that what you say? A cleaning lady?”
“Just till you get your divorce—and I, well, till I can quit Miriam officially.”
Svetlana was sitting beside her, feigning deafness. She kicked her legs rhythmically against the seat, out and in, out and in, and then began tracing a pattern in the scrim of ice on the window.
“Then,” he said, “then we marry and they can all go to hell.”
If anyone believed the imposture, Olgivanna couldn’t say. There were always people from the village around—from the countryside and surrounding towns, from Helena, Spring Green, Dodgeville, Arena, workmen, farmers, women to do chores—and while most of them wouldn’t speak two words to her face she was sure they had plenty to say out of earshot. But she was the housekeeper, that was the story, and if anyone wanted to check up on her they’d see her out there in the foulest weather, splitting wood for stove and fireplace alike, slopping the pigs and pacing off the frozen fields where the vegetable garden would go come the first hint of spring, getting the lay of the land, settling in. By the end of the first week she’d pretty well taken charge of the place, apportioning out the jobs to the household help and even involving herself in the kitchen whenever she could maneuver around Mrs. Taggertz, who fiercely resisted any encroachment on her domain—especially from a woman whose status was a matter of speculation no matter what story the head of the household might choose to circulate.
“And the father of your child”—Mrs. Taggertz would throw over her shoulder while she pounded meat on the cutting board, rolled out dough for piecrust, sent up a rolling thunder with her pots and pans for the simple authoritative pleasure of it, “what was his name again?” A pause. “He’s still in Chicago as I understand it?” “Yes,” she’d reply, hoping to leave it at that. But Mrs. Taggertz wouldn’t leave it at that. Mrs. Taggertz was on the offensive. “Any hope of reconciliation? Because, what I mean is, a child needs her father around—a girl especially and especially when she gets to that certain age, if you know what I mean?” “No,” she would say, and suddenly she remembered something that needed doing outside or down the hall, “no hope, none at all.” And then, almost apologetically, “I’m afraid.”
But Frank loved the dishes she concocted from the old recipes—nothing too extreme, of course, but something different for a change, something with flavor, he’d say, pointedly—Serbian specialties like
pasulj
and
prebanac
(with homemade sausage substituting for kielbasa) and the yeast nut-bread
(povotica)
everyone exclaimed over, and Mrs. Taggertz had to give way, at least occasionally. Plus there were cookies practically every night, molasses cookies, chocolate chip, raisin and plum, Pfeffernuesse from a recipe Dione’s mother had taught her and Nobu Tsuchiura’s bean cakes.
22
It was a beautiful thing, welcoming and wonderful, to go into that kitchen after Mrs. Taggertz had left for the night with Dione, Sylvia Moser, Nobu and her daughter, sororal, an adventure, like being back with her sisters again.
pasulj
and
prebanac
(with homemade sausage substituting for kielbasa) and the yeast nut-bread
(povotica)
everyone exclaimed over, and Mrs. Taggertz had to give way, at least occasionally. Plus there were cookies practically every night, molasses cookies, chocolate chip, raisin and plum, Pfeffernuesse from a recipe Dione’s mother had taught her and Nobu Tsuchiura’s bean cakes.
22
It was a beautiful thing, welcoming and wonderful, to go into that kitchen after Mrs. Taggertz had left for the night with Dione, Sylvia Moser, Nobu and her daughter, sororal, an adventure, like being back with her sisters again.
And if Frank was gone most of the week in Chicago overseeing his new offices or climbing aboard the Santa Fe California Limited to Los Angeles to make adjustments to the houses he’d built there,
23
she didn’t notice his absence as much as she thought she would. She was busy. Furiously busy. If she wasn’t actually the housekeeper, if she was something more—mistress of the house, Mrs. Wright-in-waiting, major domo of the Taliesin enterprise—she might as well have been, and within the month Frank had let go of Mrs. Dunleavy, the square-shouldered farmwife who’d performed that function (without remuneration, as it turned out, or rather with an initial payment and the transient promise of more to come) for the past year. There was always work to be done, and of course everyone pitched in, even Svetlana, because no one was a guest here and Frank had a hundred improvement projects going simultaneously, winter and summer, everything in flux.
23
she didn’t notice his absence as much as she thought she would. She was busy. Furiously busy. If she wasn’t actually the housekeeper, if she was something more—mistress of the house, Mrs. Wright-in-waiting, major domo of the Taliesin enterprise—she might as well have been, and within the month Frank had let go of Mrs. Dunleavy, the square-shouldered farmwife who’d performed that function (without remuneration, as it turned out, or rather with an initial payment and the transient promise of more to come) for the past year. There was always work to be done, and of course everyone pitched in, even Svetlana, because no one was a guest here and Frank had a hundred improvement projects going simultaneously, winter and summer, everything in flux.
Her divorce was granted during the second month—March—and she hardly noticed because she was devoted to a new regime now and Vlademar was nothing more than a memory in any case, a stooped too-thin little man crying out in the morning for his socks, where were his socks, and Get me coffee, Olgivanna, before I die. He was an architect. He was in Chicago. And she would deliver Svetlana to him for his visitation rights according to the terms set out in the divorce papers. That was it. That was all. But Frank was delighted by the news—“Miriam’s next,” he said, “one more swing of the pendulum and we’ll be free, both of us”—and they made an evening of it, gathering everyone round the fire while the wind cried in the treetops and they all had hot chocolate and coffee and cookies, singing the old songs round the piano till the night wound down and she found herself in bed with him, nestled in the recess of his shoulder beneath the goose-down comforter and with the coals glowing red in the grate.
Spring blew up early out of the south that year, a succession of progressively warmer rainstorms scouring the snow from the ground and delivering up rhubarb sooner than he could ever remember—rhubarb pie, nothing better—and before long the flowerbeds were rife with color and the fruit trees in bloom and the barley sprouting in the long naked furrows of the fields. Every minute of every day he felt supercharged with energy, out of bed before dawn and sitting at his desk before breakfast, working over the drawings for the National Life Insurance Company skyscraper and the Nakoma Country Club, writing an article a month for the
Architectural Record
and still finding time to oversee construction around the place and get out into the fields and the garden and dig with his pitchfork till the ideas began to take hold and he’d have to scuttle back to his desk even as his apprentices looked up from their drafting tables in alarm until he sang out a joke and then another and another. He was so full of spirit—Olgivanna, bless her, was the foundation and impetus of it—that he just had to bounce up from his chair and show the boys what he’d done and look over their drawings and maybe pontificate a little here and there. Dinner was a treasure, the conversation and joy of it, and the Sunday evenings when they all dressed in their finest and sat round the living room or on the balmy nights under the big twin oaks in the courtyard making music or reading aloud from Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson,
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist . . .
Architectural Record
and still finding time to oversee construction around the place and get out into the fields and the garden and dig with his pitchfork till the ideas began to take hold and he’d have to scuttle back to his desk even as his apprentices looked up from their drafting tables in alarm until he sang out a joke and then another and another. He was so full of spirit—Olgivanna, bless her, was the foundation and impetus of it—that he just had to bounce up from his chair and show the boys what he’d done and look over their drawings and maybe pontificate a little here and there. Dinner was a treasure, the conversation and joy of it, and the Sunday evenings when they all dressed in their finest and sat round the living room or on the balmy nights under the big twin oaks in the courtyard making music or reading aloud from Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson,
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist . . .
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