T. Boyle - The Women

“Hello!” I called, wading through the gutter and springing up the steps, beaming like a department-store greeter in the Ginza. “Welcome to Spring Green!” I was feeling an excess of energy at this point — or nerves, call it nerves. “I wish we could have arranged better weather for you,” I added. Lamely.

Both women, their faces vague and bloodless, gazed up at me warily from beneath the brims of their hats. One of them (Daisy, as it turned out) was smoking, hunched forward over the hump of her knees and the trailing wet skirts of her overcoat, brightening the flame at the tip of the cigarette with a long casual inhalation till the glow lit her face, and though she hadn’t planned it — she was merely smoking — the effect was theatrical. She wore a cloche hat with a stiff circular brim that masked her eyes and hid her hair, blond wisps of which were visible at the base of her neck as she bent to the cigarette. Her legs, what I could glimpse of them, were sleek and shapely, but sturdy too. I could see in an instant that she had hara, a quality that is often translated into English as “spirit” or “heart” (as in “she really has heart”), but in fact refers to the stomach, which we believe to be the true center of one’s body and the gateway to the soul. My mother, in her time, was possessed of great hara. As was my father, though, sadly, the afflictions of the war seemed to have taken it from him.

The other woman — or girl, I suppose, since she was all of nineteen — was unremarkable, but for the quick seizure and release of her damp bovine eyes. And her freckles, freckles that maculated every visible swath of her skin — her wrists and ankles, the backs of her hands, her cheeks, her brow, her chin. Her name was Gwendolyn Greiner. Her eyes took hold of me. “Who are you?” she demanded.

I bowed deeply and resolutely. “Tadashi Sato,” I said. The rain cascaded from the eaves. There was a smell of drenched fields, of mold, hidden rot, rurality. “Wrieto-San sent me.”

“Who?” Gwendolyn Greiner in that moment exhibited two characteristics that would define her during the coming weeks and months at Taliesin: an assaultive peevishness, nasally inflected, and an interrogatory lifting of her upper lip, exposing the outsized dentition of a horse. Did I like her? No, not at all. And her freckles — her spots — gave me a genuine shudder of revulsion. To think of her forearms beneath the sleeves of her coat and the material of her dress, her upper arms, her chest, her back, her — well, I’m sorry to have to interject a personal prejudice here, but in my view the skin of a young woman should be as smooth and unmarked as the softest chamois, a beginner’s skin, a virgin’s, a child’s.

I bowed again, my eyes on Daisy, who held the cigarette to her lips as insouciantly as if she were already installed in her room, her clothes hung neatly in the closet, books on the shelf, her feet ensconced in embroidered slippers and the fire snapping brightly in the hearth. “My apologies. What I mean to say is Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright has sent me for you. From Taliesin.”

Gwendolyn: “You? You’re from Taliesin?”

“Yes,” I said, my greeter’s smile beginning to fade. “I’m one of Wrieto-San’s — Mr. Wright’s — senior apprentices.”

It was then that Daisy spoke for the first time. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Gwen, can’t you see he’s just trying to help?” She was on her feet now, coming toward me with her hand outstretched, her lips contorted as she expelled a ribbon of smoke over her shoulder. “And what did you say your name was again?” she asked, taking my hand in hers. (Her eyes were the deep venerable blue of Noritake ware, incidentally, and her skin was flawless.)

“Tadashi,” I repeated, bowing so deeply my forehead grazed her wrist. “Tadashi Sato.”

Gwendolyn Greiner gave me a face, then ducked into the car while I fumbled with the maddening angles of the trunk. To her credit, Daisy braved the rain and did her best to help me secure it in the rumble seat—“No, no, Tadashi, here, this way,” she murmured, touching my arm for emphasis as the streets ran and the rain fell and everything in the palpable universe dripped. We managed finally to wedge the thing nose-down on the sopping seat, and since I had no rope with me (I’d been prepared for suitcases, carpetbags and the like, but not an object of this size, and I began to wonder if Daisy and her companion had somehow confused Taliesin with a resort hotel in the Catskills or maybe a transoceanic liner), we had to hope that the force of gravity would keep it there for the run home.

And it might have, but for the rudimentary lesson in physics presented by the final incline of the Taliesin drive. In order to coast clear of the mud I had no choice but to open up the engine and hit the drive at speed, the rear wheels fishtailing (wonderful expression, incidentally) and the Bearcat straining against the grade. At some point, the steering wheel seemed to develop a life of its own, as if animated by a hidden spirit pulling in opposition to my conscious efforts to keep the wheels beneath us and the chassis right side up while making forward progress at such a speed as to render the mud impotent. We were perhaps three-quarters of the way to the top, the crest of the hill and the welcoming arms of the courtyard in sight, when there was a sudden lurch, Gwendolyn Greiner spitting out air as if she were drowning and both girls bracing themselves against the dash as the trunk sprang free and catapulted into the muck behind us even as the Bearcat skated to the right and came to rest against one of the half-grown trees we’d planted the previous spring to enliven the prospect of the drive.

Daisy was closest to me. I could smell her perfume, lilac and lavender. Her eyes were wide. I was embarrassed to a certain degree — I’d hoped for a better outcome, but as Wrieto-San was always saying when one of us broke a leg or stuck a pitchfork through his hand, “Something always happens in the country.”

“Jesus,” Gwendolyn Greiner hissed, leaning past Daisy to give me a mottled glare, “where did you learn to drive?”

The trunk had come to rest a hundred feet behind us. The tree was still in place, though it was canted ever so slightly away from us and the front fender of the Bearcat was showing a drepanoid scar of pit-of-hell black beneath the Cherokee red. I gave her the only answer I could think of—“Chicago”—and Daisy, bless her, burst into laughter. Her laugh was contagious, dimpled, sweet, musical, and in the next moment Gwendolyn and I were laughing too, laughing so hard the car rocked with the force of it even as the rain began to slake and the mud firmed beneath the wheels.

Ultimately, though I labored mightily to free the thing, we were forced to abandon the car where it was, slosh down the drive to recover the trunk (or at least I sloshed down the drive to recover the trunk, forever dutiful, and yes, proper ) and make our ponderous way up the grade, through the courtyard and on up to the kitchen door. The girls had a sodden suitcase in each hand and a pair of dripping carpetbags flung over their shoulders, while I dragged the trunk along its own widening furrow in the mud. Our shoes were basted black, my trousers were ready for the scrap heap, and the girls’ skirts clung wetly — and intriguingly — to their thighs. We stood there a moment, shivering beneath the eaves, before I thought to kick off my shoes and crack the kitchen door.

Immediately I was struck by a gland-clenching whiff of cabbage soup à la Montenegro and the shrill rising tones of Mrs. Wright, who was stationed at the counter with Emma, Mabel and an onion-chopping apprentice. “Out!” she shouted. “Get out now — you’re all mud!”