T. Boyle - The Women

“Doesn’t know?” She was outraged. How could this woman even begin to defend her husband when she herself had seen him kick her as remorselessly as he might have kicked an animal? “He beat you.”

“No, I slip on de wet spot and take a tumble, dass all.” The eyes came up now in a sidelong glance. Her hair had fallen loose in a solid kinked wedge that floated over one eyebrow in a glisten of the purest black. She had a blunted look to her, the look of suffering in all its forms and array, but there was something else there too, something distant and calculating.

It took a moment before Mamah realized it wasn’t fear of her husband that was driving her — this pretty young girl who only meant well — but fear of her, of the white woman who’d invaded the kitchen, the mistress of the house who could snap her fingers and hire and fire three times over. It was a shock. She’d seen women cowed by their husbands, living behind them, through them, as if they were mere instruments or tools, but this was sadder still, the saddest thing in the world. “You know I have to let you go,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Give ’im one more chance. He de good mon. You say so youself.”

But she was shaking her head, awash with emotion, soaked in it, trembling still with the dregs of the fear and rage that had thrown her up against that hateful black beast who’d beaten his wife as if she weren’t even human and was one step from turning on her too. It was impossible, intolerable to have that sort of thing in her own house as if they were in some foreign slum, some shanty crawling with every kind of violence and ignorance and fever. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I know it’s not your fault — you’re a good woman, I’m sure of it, a good dutiful young woman and a first-rate cook. . but don’t you see? It’s just wrong. Wrong.”

She realized then that she still had the wet compress in her hand and she held it out before her with an insistent shake of her wrist till Gertrude stepped forward and took it. Then she went to the door, thinking of Frank because Frank would know what to do, Frank would handle this, and she didn’t care how hectic his work was or how much they needed him because he’d have to come home that very afternoon, on the next train, and she wouldn’t feel safe till he did. She’d get her bag and go right straight out the door and have Billy drive her to the telegraph office, that was what she was thinking, but she paused just a moment in the doorway to look back at Gertrude standing stock-still amidst the wreckage with the dripping rag clenched in one hand while she absently lifted the other to her lip and the dark stain of blood there. “You’ve got two weeks,” she said. And once more, one final time: “I’m sorry.”

Her first impulse was to go to the drafting room and rouse Brodelle or Herbert Fritz to go find Billy and she’d actually started off in that direction before she reversed herself and went instead to the bedroom for her purse and hat. She barely glanced at herself in the mirror — she was wrought up, her heart in her mouth, and there was no time to waste — and then she was striding through the house, past the kitchen, out the door to the loggia and into the drafting room. Herbert was there, bent over his desk, but Brodelle was nowhere to be seen.

“Herbert, I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said, and she could hear the agitation in her own voice, “but I was wondering if you’ve seen Billy — or, I mean, if you could go and fetch him, please. I’ve got to — it’s urgent.”

The boy was wearing a loose black satin tie and long trailing smock, in imitation of Frank, though it promised to be another hot day. He’d been deep in his work and he gave her a look of utter bewilderment, as if he’d suddenly lost the capacity to speak, snatching a quick glance at his drawing before he flushed and got to his feet. “He was here earlier, with Brodelle, an hour ago maybe—”

“Where is Emil?”

A duck of the head. “He said he was going to go riding before lunch — and work late, of course, to make up for it—”

She waved a hand in dismissal. “If you’d tell Billy to bring the motorcar round — I need to go into the village and I won’t be gone an hour. It’s very urgent.” He was already at the door, a scramble of limbs and the scrape of his shoes, when she called out to him. “I won’t be taking the children.” She hesitated a moment, watching his face — he was still flustered but anxious to please, a good boy, malleable, likable. “Would you look in on them — if it’s not too much trouble?”

The sun was already baking the flagstones of the courtyard as Billy held the door for her and she climbed into the car, everything still and peaceful and not the hint of a breeze. Billy was in his work clothes, as clean and precise and neat as he always was, no matter the job or its demands or how grease-stained and mud-caked his fellow workers might have been. He tipped his hat to her as he slid behind the wheel—“Looks to be another scorcher,” he said and she answered that it certainly did — and that was the last thing she said until he pulled up in front of the Western Union office and she instructed him to wait there for her. She’d wanted to confide in him, but the thought of the scene in the kitchen was too humiliating, too overwhelming, to confide to anyone. She’d had a shock, that was it. And she wasn’t over it yet.

It took her two minutes to compose the telegram — COME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE STOP SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED — and then she paid the man, got in the car and had Billy drive her back to Taliesin, trying to stay calm, telling herself that this crisis would pass as they all invariably did and that Frank would be there to support her, as he’d always been and always would be. 174

When Billy turned in off the main road, she watched the house emerge from its frame of trees, a house more precious and exquisite than anything in Tuscany or Umbria or anywhere else — the sky above and Frank’s creation below, every detail spun out of his head and for her, for her — and it made her glad and proud too. And it calmed her, just the sight of it, because there was no place she’d rather be. It was home. She was home. And as Billy shifted gears to climb the hill she felt a stab of nostalgia so powerful the tears came to her eyes, but she was quick to dab them with her handkerchief and avert her face so Billy wouldn’t notice. It was nerves, that was all.

She sent Herbert to tell the cook that she and the children would be taking lunch separately out on the screened-in porch and that the workmen would be served in the dining room, and Herbert bobbed back almost immediately to say that the cook was asking how many they’d be. She was seated at her desk, rereading a paragraph she’d already read twelve times over, feigning normalcy — everything was on an even keel, nothing amiss, and she wanted them all to believe that, even Carleton — and she looked up and counted them off on her fingers. “Well, let’s see,” she said, “Brodelle’s here somewhere, isn’t he?”

“He’s back at his desk, yes.”

“All right: Emil and you, and Brunker and Lindblom — that makes four. And Billy makes five.”

“And Billy’s kid.”

“Ernest.” She smiled. “He’s busy learning his father’s trade, is he? I hope he’ll keep up his studies when school starts up again in the fall — there’s no substitute for a good education, wouldn’t you agree?”

He shuffled and stammered a bit, but certainly he agreed — that was the whole point of his being here at Taliesin under the hand of Mr. Wright — and of course, he’d appreciated the gift of The Woman Movement , which he was finding very. . stimulating.