T. Boyle - The Women

As they ate, they watched the lake transmuted from copper to silver to lead, and then the windows began to give back the light of the room and Frank went round the house, turning on the lamps one after the other. Afterward, Mrs. Devine came in to take Frank’s dictation while the cook washed and stacked the dishes and Olgivanna put the children to bed, the baby in the master bedroom and Svetlana on the glassed-in porch. Then she sat by the fire with her knitting — she was making matching caps and scarves for the children in a snowflake pattern she’d devised herself — and listened to Frank’s voice as it rose and dipped through its modulations. She loved listening to him, even when he backtracked to correct himself or when he lost his patience and began wisecracking or broke into song, because he was telling a story, his own story, the narrative of his boyhood when he was sent to his Uncle James’ farm each summer to labor from dawn to dusk. “ ‘Whosoever would sow must hoe,’ ” he dictated in his strong clear tones, then paused to glance over his spectacles. “Paragraph break. And continue: ‘And if he who hoes would reap — he must weed.’ ”

It was ten o’clock, Mrs. Devine stifling a series of yawns, Frank as indefatigable as ever, the wind up in the trees and the clock on the mantel-piece announcing the hour in a sleepy repetitive drone, when there was a knock at the kitchen door. The first thing that came into Olgivanna’s head was Mrs. Simpson’s son — was he returning the fishing pole? Still looking for it? But then she glanced at Frank and went cold. He’d come up out of his chair so fast the pages of his notes looped away from him to spill at his feet and he stood poised there, every fiber of him straining toward the kitchen, where Viola, in carpet slippers and a gray cardigan buttoned up over the glossy floral print of her dress, rose heavily to answer the door.

A man’s voice carried in out of the night—“Is Mr. Richardson at home?”—and Viola, innocent of everything, murmured, “Yes, I believe he is.”

In the next instant half a dozen men in hats and overcoats shouldered their way into the room even as Frank took a step back as if he were uncertain on his feet, and Olgivanna saw the fear in his eyes, real fear, for the first time since she’d known him. The room filled. There were more men in the kitchen, on the porch. Their faces were tight and waxen as they blinked against the light and they brought a smell with them, a harsh odor of the night, the primeval mud on their shoes, cigar smoke. Mrs. Devine, the stenographer, let out a gasp so sharp and sudden it was as if someone had punctured a tire. And all Olgivanna could think was We’re the Richardsons, that’s all, just the Richardsons. We’re nobody. We’re harmless. They can’t touch us.

“You’re all under arrest!” one of them shouted, the one in the middle, with the massive jaw and the brutal shining oversized boots and the eyes that chewed up and spat out everything in the room, and she saw that he was brandishing a badge. There was another one beside her, crowding her, breathing his beer or whiskey or whatever it was right in her face — and somehow she seemed to have gotten up out of her chair without being aware of it, the baby’s cap dangling by a thread from one hand, the other at the collar of her dress, the sudden assault scrambling her senses, strangers, hateful strangers right there in her house as if she were under the whip of the Cheka, as if she were in Russia still and all the rest had been a dream.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Frank snapped, trying to brave it out. “On what charges? And what do you mean bursting in here like this?”

It was then that another man shoved his way into the room, a jowly tall looming presence in a tan overcoat that fanned out behind him like an Indian blanket. “Well, here they are,” he bellowed, “—at last. Now, where’s the kid?” And then, before anyone could stop him, he jerked open the bedroom door and burst in on Iovanna with a shout. “Yeah, here it is, in here, the baby!”

That was when Frank made a move for him and the big one, the sheriff, took hold of him—“No violence now,” he said, “and you come quietly”—and Frank said, “Get that man out of there or I’ll—”

And suddenly she was moving, forcing her way into the bedroom even as the man in the tan overcoat snatched the blankets off Pussy and Pussy’s eyes flashed open on the ugly brutal slab of his face and she let out the first startled cry — he was the lawyer, Miriam’s lawyer, that was who he was, and for Olgivanna the realization was incendiary. She shoved him aside, actually shoved him, and in the next instant she had the baby pressed to her and she was the one who was shouting now. “You get out of here! You have no right! You stop this, this persecution!”

But he wasn’t listening because he was already reeling back through the door, drunk with the imprimatur of authority, crying out in a towering voice, “Now, where’s the other one, where’s Hinzenberg’s kid?”

The rest was chaos, Svetlana dragged in off the porch by some flat-faced goon, shocked out of her sleep and crying aloud in a series of ascending whoops, Pussy shrieking in counterpoint with all the shearing power of her developing lungs and Frank wrestling with the men at the door while the stenographer and cook looked on in horror and bewilderment. And worse: distaste. In all the confusion and the wrestling back and forth, the look Viola gave her came closest to breaking her down — and she wasn’t going to give way to tears, not now and not ever, because she was stronger than that. But here was this mild unremarkable woman who’d shared the house with them for six weeks now, day in and day out, their intimate, trusted and trusting, and her eyes showed nothing but contempt. It was as if she’d stepped on a snake while mopping the kitchen floor, taken hold of the broom and had it sprout teeth and bite her, and Olgivanna wanted to explain it all to her, tell her that they’d been forced to live like this, to lie and assume fictive personalities, to cower and hide like criminals when they were innocent, innocent of everything but persecution. Miriam, she wanted to shout, Miriam’s the criminal.

But a man was there at her side and he was telling her that she had to come along—“No!” Frank roared. “Just me, just take me. Let them stay here, under guard if need be, but let them stay!”—and Svetlana broke free then and ran to her, screaming, and Olgivanna lost all control. Suddenly it was her voice and her voice alone that every person in that room was hearing. “Enough!” she shouted. “You men should be ashamed. Can you not see that you are terrifying this child — both these children?”

The flat-faced one took a step back. The sheriff loosened his grip on Frank’s arm and Frank jerked it away, indignant, outraged. Both the children gasped for breath and the fire hissed and every man in the room looked down at his shoes.

“Now,” she snapped as if she were shaking out a rug, “we will cooperate, but I want every one of you here to tell this child”—she swung Svetlana around to face them—“that everything is going to be all right. Well? Do you hear me? Is there a man in this room who does not have a little boy or girl at home right now? A niece? A nephew?” She glared at them. “Are you beasts?”

There was a murmur, the rough voices muted, and then it was all right. The sheriff crossed the room to her, removed his hat to reveal a compressed tangle of sweat-soaked hair, and told her he was sorry and that if it was up to him he’d let her stay. “But you have to understand, ma’am, it’s my duty to serve the law and these warrants must be answered to.” His voice was soft, almost sweet, and for a moment she thought he was going to reach out and pat Svetlana’s head. “Now, we’ll give you time to gather your things and put aside some clothes for the kids, but they’re going to have to go into protective custody, you understand, at least till the morning.”