T. Boyle - The Women

But now, as he sat in the wet grass of the hillside and watched the moving point of light that was Joseph Williams’ cigarette bisecting the planes of the night, a new feeling came over him, as if the ligature round his heart had been loosened by a single coil. She was dead and he wasn’t and no amount of brooding or sorrow could amend that. It was as if she’d never existed or existed in another sphere altogether, a kind of permanent limbo to which he had no access. She was gone, in spirit and flesh, but here was the concrete evidence of her — Taliesin. What was left of it, anyway, the studio and back rooms, the garages and stables standing forlorn and abandoned, the place of the hill no arsonist or murderer could ever eradicate. He’d built it for her, as a refuge from the loose tongues and prying eyes of the biddies and gossips and Sunday saints who’d made her life a hell, and in that moment he understood that he would build it again, all over again, as a monument to her.

It was the least he could do — or no, the only thing he could do, the right thing, the moral thing — and as he stared into the darkness where the main rooms had stood he was already devising plans against the backdrop of the night, seeing a new way to configure what had been razed to coordinate with the portion of the structure the fire had spared. And this was ordained too, else why had the conflagration stopped short of consuming the whole of the place if he hadn’t been meant to rebuild?

When it came to it — and he was being honest with himself now — he’d never really been satisfied with the command of the rooms nor with the limited space for guests and workers, and here was an opportunity to expand on the original, make the grand rooms grander, improve the sweep of the views and build out to the southwest, elongating the foot of the reversed L that gave the house its shape within the structure of the hill, strengthening the lines, improving the flow 85. . He’d add a new wing for guests and servants’ quarters and another for his aunts and his mother, just there, to the west. Enlarge the studio, redefine the courtyard. Make the space more intimate and expansive at the same time. He could see it all as if it were standing there before him, graced with light.

He was so caught up in the concept he couldn’t keep still and before he knew it he was rushing headlong in the dark, through the sodden grass and the clinging fabric of the night, down the slope and through the door to the studio, calling out to his watchman that it was all right, everything was all right. He had a rationale. He had a plan. Mamah, he would do it for Mamah. Spare nothing. Let the details dictate themselves, Taliesin II rising unshakably out of the ashes of Taliesin I as if Isaiah’s Lord were the mildest and gentlest of shepherds leading the way.

He lingered there a week, eating little, sleeping less. The sores burst and his shirt stuck to his skin. He paced round the ruins, raked through the ashes for the charred fragments of his pottery, rode horseback over the hills, hair streaming and cape flying till he could have been a figure summoned by the Brontës, grieving all the while and yet planning too, the images coming to him in a flood he couldn’t stop. But plans meant nothing sans the wherewithal to realize them, and at the end of the week he left orders with Billy Weston for the cleanup and went back to Chicago. And work.

At the time he was living in a rented house at 25 East Cedar Street, and when he returned he resolutely kept his mother at arm’s length (he was grieving; he needed to be alone), and resisted overtures from his daughter Catherine (couldn’t he use her help with the housekeeping?) even as he fought Kitty over his monthly payments to her and the disposition of the house in Oak Park where they’d raised the children together. There were projects on the board. 86People were making demands on him. The flow of funds at Midway Gardens had fallen off to a trickle, the finish work stalled even as audiences gathered every evening in an arena that cried out for completion. From the press he absorbed the sort of abuse to which he thought he’d become inured — LOVE BUNGALOW KILLINGS; WILD NEGRO CHEF SLAYS 7; WRIGHT AFFINITY SLAIN — but he felt he had no choice but to issue a statement to controvert the assaults on Mamah’s character, a woman who was better and stronger and more willing to live her ideals than any woman he’d ever known. 87

In the midst of all this, he made the smallest of decisions — a staffing matter, nothing really, the sort of thing he’d dealt with a thousand times over the years — and another woman came into his life. He’d asked around about a housekeeper, someone efficient, quiet, reliable, who could see to his needs in Chicago and then in Spring Green when the renovation started — he was adrift without Mamah there to look after him. The dishes were a nuisance, piled up around the house with unrecognizable crusts of food fused to their surfaces, the rugs were filthy, the linens needed changing, he was running short of shirts and underwear — socks — and he was tired of having to send someone out to the laundry every other day. The smallest thing. That was all he needed. Someone to look after him.

The morning after he’d put out his inquiries — very early, before he’d even shaved or had a chance to think about eggs, frying pans and maple-cured bacon from the butcher down the street — there was a knock at the door. He was half inclined to ignore it. Who could it be at this hour — a newspaperman hoping to provoke him into providing copy for the evening edition? A creditor demanding payment? Fresh bad news? “Just a minute!” he shouted down the hall from the bathroom. And then, his voice rising in irritation, “Who is it?”

There was no answer, but the banging at the door continued, grew in volume even. He came out into the hall, beginning to feel alarmed — his nerves were on edge, of course they were — and he called out again. He glanced at his watch. It was quarter past six. Continued banging, peremptory, outraged. He went to the door and jerked it open.

A tiny wizened woman was standing there on the stoop, her shoulders rounded, her pale blue eyes rising up to him like gas bubbles in a bottle of seltzer water. She was dressed entirely in black, with button-up shoes and a bonnet out of the last century.

“Yes?” he said, utterly bewildered. Was she lost? Anile? A charity case?

“I’m here to work,” she said, her voice booming out at him as if she were shouting from across the street. She already had a hand on the door, was already pushing her way past him and into the house.

“But what are you doing?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

She stood there a moment, scanning the room, muttering under her breath. Then she set down her bag — and now he saw it, an ear trumpet — and started gathering up the plates in a way that was almost comical. But it wasn’t comical. It was an intrusion. An irritation. He took her by the arm, the flesh there surprisingly firm, and wheeled her around. “Listen, ma’am, madam, you can’t just—”

She gave him a look and he let go of her arm. “Mrs. Nellie Breen,” she boomed, “but you can call me Mother. It was your assistant at Midway, Mr. Mueller, sent me. You have my deepest condolences and all the redemptive love of the Saints and the Virgin Mary and the Lord Jesus Himself for the terrible afflictions that came down upon your head, which I saw in the newspapers. . Which way did you say the kitchen was? And I’ll need to see my room, of course.”

At first he thought she was too frail for housework, but he was wrong there — she worked throughout the day without stint, in a kind of quiet outrage that took itself out on dirt and disorder. And if he thought the ear trumpet laughable, the resort of whiskered nonagenarians, a prop for the vaudeville stage, he quickly came to appreciate its value. He wanted efficiency. He wanted quiet. And there really wasn’t much need to communicate with Mother Breen, not after they’d got through the initial civilities and the dishes were soaking in a pan of hot water in the sink.