T. Boyle - The Women

She took the cocktail and downed it in two gulps. Tears clouded her eyes. “Frank,” she began, “Frank, he—”

“You’ve got to be strong,” Leora said, and who could blame her if her first thought was morbid? “At his age, well these things have to be expected. . Lord knows, I should know. And Dwight lingered, that was the worst of it.”

“No, no, you don’t understand — Frank’s divorcing me.”

Five minutes later, the Chinese was out in the flowerbed, recovering the fragments of the summons. Which, after a second martini, they painstakingly reconstructed as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. The first thing, they both agreed, even before calling Frank, was to write the judge in the case and insist, or rather plead, that she wanted a reconciliation, that she loved her husband still, that their separation was temporary — for her health, just till she recovered her health — and she’d never even dreamed of divorce. Leora helped her with the letter, which ran to three pages, typed, and immediately she felt better. She thought she might like to put something on her stomach — veal chops, mashed potatoes, haricots verts (the Chinese really was a marvelous cook) — and then she went to the telephone. Or no, she took up the telephone as if it were a weapon, a sword she could wield with a single hand and still manage to draw blood at a distance of two thousand miles, eight o’clock in California — ten there, just when he’d be in the studio, lost to the world over his drawings, unless he was having one of his musical nights amidst the foreign toadies and kiss-ups he’d surrounded himself with.

The operator got her the number and her heart began to race as she waited for the connection to be made. There was a sound of static, a soft mechanical buzz, and then a voice she didn’t recognize — a man’s voice — came at her out of the ether: “Hello?”

“I want Frank,” she said and she wished now she’d taken a shot to calm her nerves. She was wrought up all over again, the tension tearing at her till she felt as if she were reliving the shock of that first moment at the door when that little man, that fleck of human detritus, had handed her the summons—

“Yes?” the voice said. “Who is this?”

“Miriam. His wife. And who the hell are you?”

“Uh. . sorry.” The phone was muffled; someone was whispering. “One moment, please.”

Frank came on the line then and his voice was bluff and businesslike. “Yes, Miriam, hello. What can I do for you?”

She couldn’t contain herself, the air ratcheting up out of her lungs and tearing at her throat as if she’d swallowed a pneumatic pump: “Criminal!” she shrieked. “Weasel! You, you fucking vermin! How dare you treat me like this? Really, how dare you!?”

“Miriam,” he said. And he might have said something to calm her, something in the soft priestly tones he used when he was being holier-than-thou, which was about eighty percent of the time, but she didn’t hear him, didn’t want to hear him.

“Shit!” she shouted. “Shit! You think you can cast me off like some whore, some, some bitch you’ve used for your pleasure and got enough of, is that what you think? Because if you do—”

There was more, a whole lot more, and tears too — she couldn’t help it, she was only human and this was the lowest, dirtiest thing that anybody had ever done to her — and he tried to be meliorative and soft but the sound of him, the smugness, the finality in his voice, just turned all her jets on high till he began to harden and the connection was suddenly, violently, broken.

In the morning, once she’d bathed and done her hair and used her pravaz to spread its creeping warmth even to her toes and fingertips and numb her to whatever the day might bring (and yes, she’d hidden her kit from Frank as much as possible and from Leora too, not that she was ashamed or in danger of becoming a morphinomane or anything of that nature, but because her medicines were private, her own affair and no one else’s, no matter how close they were— or had been ), she sat down with Leora over breakfast and they both agreed that she needed a lawyer of her own. Frank had a lawyer. Why shouldn’t she have one? How many women had they both known who’d been tossed out in the street like so much baggage and without a dime to their names? Or a nickel? Not even a nickel.

After breakfast she went back out to the bungalow and used the telephone to make an appointment for that afternoon with Wilson Siddons Barker III, an attorney who specialized in divorce cases and came highly recommended by any number of people Leora knew. She spent a long while on her face and clothes — the better part of the morning — finally selecting a spring suit of her own design, an all-wool Poiret twill in navy with a silk peau de cygne lining, and her blue velvet cape and turban to match. She completed the outfit with her pearls and lorgnette along with two strings of jet beads and a diamond brooch her mother had bequeathed her. “Oh, my, my,” Leora said when she had a look at her, “you are a marvel.”

“You think the brooch is too much?” she said, surveying herself in the full-length mirror in the front hall.

Leora had taken some care with her dress too and she did have style, no doubt about it. She wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Miriam herself was, but then Miriam could carry it off in a way Leora never could — and yet still she had to admit her friend looked terrific in mauve crepe de chine and a bob hat with a spray of pheasant feathers that trailed prettily over one shoulder. “No, no,” Leora murmured, her lips pursed and her eyes fixed on her. “You want to make an impression.”

“You like it? You do? Really?” Miriam felt a flood of satisfaction and for a moment forgot the underlying purpose of all this. They were going to lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel, yes, but that was just a diversion from the real meat of the day — the interview with the attorney and just what that meant. “You know, this brooch — and the cameo, see the cameo? It’s meant to be the Three Graces, Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia — isn’t that darling? Brilliance, Joy and Bloom. This was all my mother’s and her mother’s before her. My jewelry”—she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw a tall regal woman staring back at her, the sort of woman who could fend for herself, fetch attorneys, fight Frank Wright till he was sorry he’d ever been born—“is my one real hedge against the worst. If I have to go begging, at least I’ve got something to fall back on.”

“And the ring? Is that the Cleopatra ring?”

“So legend has it. I don’t know the whole story, nobody does, I suppose, but it had been in my husband’s family — his grandfather had it from a jeweler who’d dealt in all sorts of antiquities, especially Egyptian. It’s supposed to be a scarab, you see? They say Cleopatra wore it as a talisman to keep her lovers faithful.” She laughed. “As if anything could control a man when the urge comes over him. But did you know I almost sold it in Paris when the war broke out? There was a man from the museum there, very charming, very persuasive, but I just couldn’t part with it. And I’m so glad. It’s my most important piece.” A smile now, rueful, a delicate delicious infusion of the lips with blood — and she could see Leora was skeptical, or maybe jealous, maybe that was it. Jealous, but doing her best to hide it. “It’s my ring of vengeance, darling. And don’t you think Frank doesn’t know it.”

As it turned out, William Siddons Barker III was very happy to see her, though he sympathized with what she was going through, of course, and it was a shame, a real shame (she broke down in his office, she couldn’t help herself, even with Leora at her side), and he assured her that he would do everything he could for her. He was true to his word. Through his Chicago associate, Frederick S. Fake, 17he was able to get Frank to drop the suit by threatening to counter-sue on the grounds of physical cruelty — yes, and how would that look in the papers, WORLD FAMOUS ARCHITECT BEATS WIFE — and they moved on from there, very slowly, step by faltering step, toward the inevitable.