T. Boyle - The Women

Just when she’d begun to give up hope, when she found herself going down to dinner with her face discomposed from sobbing into her two cupped hands for what seemed hours at a time, when the pravaz went dull and she thought the rain would never let up, Mr. Jackson telephoned to report that Taliesin was hers. He’d arranged for a court order granting her admittance — those workmen had no right to keep her off her own property, no right in the world, and the court had come down firmly on her side — and he offered to drive her all the way up to Wisconsin himself. She could take possession of the place, move things in, do anything she liked with the artwork, the furnishings, the livestock. She could cut down the trees, drain the lake, sell off the corn, fire the staff wholesale and let the dust and cobwebs accumulate till the place looked like the catacombs under one of those old churches in Italy. If it struck her fancy, she could board up the windows, order a dozen Victorian loveseats, hang doilies from the famous cantilevered eaves. And Frank could do nothing to stop her.

This time when she stepped out of the car, there was only Billy Weston at the gate. She stood there glaring at him under the hellish sun, enduring the mud and the insects and the assault of rural odors while Mr. Jackson handed over the papers and the two conferred. Even then, Billy stalled. He had to go up and telephone to Mr. Wright’s lawyer, he said, and, infuriatingly, made her wait there at the locked gate while he ambled up the hill, disappeared into the house for a good ten minutes, and then ambled down again. “Only her,” he said, addressing Mr. Jackson as he turned the key in the padlock and grudgingly pulled back the gate. “That’s what the papers say, only her. Not you.”

She felt strange coming up the drive, everything so familiar — the crunch of the gravel under her feet, the shadows, the angles of the buildings, the way the courtyard opened up like a pair of welcoming arms — and yet different too. How long had it been? Two years — better than two years. But Frank never stood still, that was for sure. He’d been busy since the fire, she could see that, new roofs sprouting over the living quarters, the back buildings more elaborate, more fully integrated into the whole. And the house was beautiful, she had to admit it. There was an aura of peace about the place, everything so still and ageless, and she had a thrill of recognition that took her all the way back to her years in Europe and the first time she stepped into the arching recesses of the Pantheon or St. Peter’s Basilica. She was wrought up, of course she was, but the simple transparent beauty of the place had a calming effect beyond all thought of confrontation and loss, and the memories came back to her in a rush.

There may have been a lock on the gate, but there were no locks on the doors — Frank didn’t believe in keys 53—and she passed through the courtyard and slipped in the main entrance. It was like plunging into a pool, cool and mysterious, the stone pillars burnished with an aqueous light, the wood glowing as if it were wet, and everything silent as a dream. He wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. Nobody was. All those rooms, all that empty space, and not a soul around, not even the servants. For a long while, Miriam hesitated at the door, breathing in the scent of the place, orienting herself — Frank was gone, vanished, and he’d ducked out on her again, the coward, the bastard, the little man — and then, gradually, it came to her that it was better this way, and her heart decelerated and her breathing slowed, and step by step, she entered deeper into the house and began to explore.

Every detail, every change, leapt out at her, 54and it was almost as if the flesh of a new house had been stretched over the bones of the old — and it had, because all this had been burned, but for the stone itself, hadn’t it? She ran her hand over the rough pillars to feel the grit there, sat in the chairs, took in the views out the living room windows like an interloper, a thief of views. The more she explored — or was she snooping, was that what it was? — the more agitated she became. She saw the new carpets, the furniture, new artwork to replace the old. He’d been extravagant here, sparing nothing, and all the while pleading poverty to the court. But then he was just a two-bit schemer, wasn’t he? A liar and a skinflint. He took from the rich and gave to himself and he didn’t give a damn about anybody so long as he got what he wanted.

She moved through the house like a detective in a dime novel, examining everything, the canned food in the cupboard, the table set for an uneaten meal, the dirty plates in the sink, the unmade beds — he’d decamped in a hurry, she saw that, but it gave her little satisfaction. There were the sheets in the master bedroom, sheets that smelled of him — yes, she raised them to her face — and something else too, another presence, her, Olgivanna, the usurper in her husband’s bed. For a long while she sat there on the edge of the bed, her mind ranging so far that she forgot all about Mr. Jackson waiting for her at the gate and Billy Weston, whom she was going to sack the minute she had the opportunity, and all the rest of the toadies and ingrates too, and she might have stayed there till night came down but for the two very sympathetic gentlemen from the Bank of Wisconsin, Madison, who knocked meekly at the door to inform her that her husband was in arrears on his mortgage, which, sadly, had been inflated by the rebuilding loan, and that they were foreclosing on the property forthwith.

Unless, of course, she, as co-owner, could come up with the sum owing.

And how much was it?

Twenty-five thousand on the mortgage, plus a further chattel mortgage of $1,500 and liens for unpaid bills of $17,000, totaling, in all, $43,500.

She invited them in, apologizing because she was unable to offer them anything under the circumstances, and she sat there in Frank’s grand living room with its gleaming treasures and baronial views, staring numbly at them, thinking first of her pravaz and then of Frank — he’d outmaneuvered her again, that was what he was thinking. Wherever he was. Out of the country, no doubt. Living in a cheap hotel where no one asks any questions. Maybe he was wearing a false beard — that would be funny, Frank in a false beard like some baggy-pants comedian on the vaudeville circuit. He thought he’d put one over on her. Thought he was having the last laugh. But he’d lost Taliesin and Taliesin was his life. And he stood to lose a whole lot more any day now. Because what he didn’t know was that Mr. Jackson was also representing the little Russian’s husband — Hinzenburg — and that the husband had brought adultery charges against him. And more: he was suing Frank for $250,000 for alienating the affections of his wife and daughter, filing a writ of habeas corpus for return of the child and offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for capture of the fugitives. Even then, even as she sat across from the lip-licking bankers and let her gaze rest on one of Frank’s precious Chinese Buddhas, the sheriff of Sauk County, Wisconsin, was circulating photographs of him. And of her. And of the child.

Yes. And who was having the last laugh now?

Olgivanna hadn ’t spoken with the reporter, hadn’t admitted he was alive and breathing and standing there before her, his hands in constant motion and his face rearranging itself around every plea and provocation. She blocked her ears too, rising swiftly from the chair, taking Svetlana by the hand and marching straight into the house to close the door firmly behind her and instruct Mrs. Taggertz to send word down to Frank so that Billy Weston and the others could escort the man from the property with whatever degree of physical persuasion they deemed necessary. But the incident had its effect. For weeks she was afraid to leave the house, even to sit in the courtyard, though Frank tried to reassure her — he’d instructed the men to keep a lookout and he swore he’d have any and all trespassers prosecuted, “whether they’re newspapermen or gypsies or Bible salesmen”—and she found herself growing paler and weaker by the day. Just to get out, just to free herself of all the little irritations of the household, the baby’s colic, Svetlana’s moods, Frank’s all-encompassing presence, she found herself roaming the fields at night, in the fastness of the dark, and when the mosquitoes came to suck her blood it was almost a relief.