T. Boyle - The Women

It hurt her. Every day it hurt. Who was he to throw her over? She was the prize here, not he. And she wrote him to that effect, letter after letter, alternately damning him and reminding him of the passion they once shared, a passion that towered above the petty loves and conventions of the masses — nine years his mistress 18and never a complaint out of her, or barely, barely a whisper — and she called long distance whenever the rage boiled up in her, just to hear the iron in his voice and listen to his pathetic rationalizations, to berate him and scream and sob and curse over the wire till all the operators’ ears from Los Angeles to Spring Green must have sizzled like fat in a pan.

He was adamant — there could be no reconciliation. There was no question of it. On that he wouldn’t give an inch. Still — and this puzzled her — he went out of his way to be reasonable when it ultimately came down to reaching a compromise. More than reasonable: generous. Him, of all people. Frank, who considered an invoice a kind of memorial only and who wouldn’t pay up even if he had the money right in his pocket and the sheriff was at the door. And when they did finally agree some four months later on a divorce settlement—$10,000 in cash, $250 a month maintenance and a half-interest in Taliesin — he even threw in a bone. She’d always claimed she wanted to go back to Paris, his lawyer told hers — that was his understanding — and he wanted her to know he was amenable to that. So much so that if she would leave for Paris within six weeks of signing the settlement, he would give her an additional one thousand dollars on top and exclusive of everything else, just to help ease her transition.

She thought about that — Paris — the rooms she’d taken over an antiquities dealer on the rue des Saints-Pères, the artists she’d counted among her closest intimates, the bistros, the cafés, the gay life she’d led after Emil had passed on, and she very nearly relented. Paris in winter. Paris for Christmas. The smell of roasting marrons hanging over the streets, the blue-gray light of the afternoon, real life, real food, bouillabaisse, foie gras, les fromages. But there was something going on here she didn’t like, something he was hiding from her. She knew him. She knew the way his mind worked.

What she didn’t know about — not yet — was Olgivanna.

Frank took to Svetlana as if she were his own, and during the first month of the new year it seemed to Olgivanna as if he were going out of his way to spoil the child — endless trips to the zoo, concerts, ice-skating parties on Lake Michigan, frankfurters, popcorn balls, candied apples on a stick — but that was just part of his charm. He never did anything by half measures. He was an enthusiast for life, in love with her and her daughter too, genuine and unself-conscious, though when they were seen on the street together people naturally mistook Svetlana for his granddaughter and that seemed to throw him off his stride. He was no grandfather, he would protest (though he was — his son John had a daughter of three or four, that much Olgivanna knew), but if he was living an illusion, strutting at her side like a young lover and reveling in it, why deny him? Svetlana could have been his daughter — she should have been, an exquisite long-limbed beauty of seven with much more of her mother than Vlademar in her, and she loved the attention, loved the treats and the piggy-back rides and climbing up beside him on the piano bench to pound the keys and sing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Sweeter Than Sugar” along with him, her voice piping and probing even as his own mellow tenor held fast to the melody.

Olgivanna was aware that he was auditioning for the role— Daddy Frank, that was what her daughter called him, just let him step into the room and she’d jump up and spring for his arms, shouting out “Daddy Frank, Daddy Frank!”—and she gave him credit for it, for the headlong rush of his desire and commitment. He was a force of nature, that was what he was, an avalanche of need and emotion that swept all before it. And she was in love too, mad for him, for the pleasure he took in her and the pleasure he gave her in return (Vlademar was nothing compared to him, nothing, as appealing as a dishrag, a milksop, and for the rest of her life she would say that she didn’t know what love was — the physical act, the uniting of two bodies above and beyond the intertwining of their spirits — until she met Frank). And more than that, she was in search of something to hold on to — a cause, a modus vivendi, yes, but security and protection too — and he was there to provide a pair of broad shoulders 19when she most needed them — her savings were dwindling, her husband wasn’t doing much to help and it was awkward living at someone else’s pleasure, a guest in that overcrowded apartment in Chicago with people she’d never really liked to begin with. So when he asked her to come to Taliesin again, with her daughter, and not just for a weekend, but to move in and be part of the life of the place, of his life — she never hesitated.

This time the route was familiar to her. And if the countryside seemed bleaker than it had at Christmas when even the most dismal farmhouse was enlivened by a wreath at the door or a candle in the window, at least now she had Svetlana with her to keep her company. They had their sandwiches, milk for her daughter, coffee for her, Svetlana alternately chattering to her new teddy bear (“Eat your sandwich, Teddy; Pack your things; We’re going on a trip!”) and bent in concentration over a tracing book and a box of colored pencils Frank had bought her. Everything they had in the world was packed into a single steamer trunk in the luggage car somewhere behind them (and it wasn’t much — a few changes of clothes, books, letters, two porcelain dolls Svetlana couldn’t seem to exist without — because all this time they’d been living under Georgei’s regime and Georgei preached asceticism). 20

“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?”