T. Boyle - The Women

He took it up idly, his mind in Japan still. A faint scent of perfume rose to him, as if a new presence had entered the room, a woman’s presence, sleek and refined and dwelling in abstraction. He put his nose to the envelope — he couldn’t help himself, and how long had it been? It was addressed in a bold looping hand that seemed to leap off the page to Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect; the return address gave a street number and arrondissement in Paris, but the postmark was stamped Chicago, Illinois. He unfolded the letter and began to read with an absorption so complete it was as if a spell had come over him:

Dear Mr. Wright,

I am writing to express my deepest sympathy and shock over your tragic loss, knowing how painful such a loss can be, especially at this time of the year, when we all look back upon our sorrows and blessings in the approach of Yuletide as if gazing into a reflection in the vast darkling mere of our lives. Oh, to think of the hand the Fates deal us! Love and death poised in counterpoint, cruelly, cruelly! For I too have borne the terrible tragedy of a loss in love and life and I can tell you that you must think not of what might have been, but of your loved one arisen in the ecstasy of eternal being. We are kindred souls, we two. Battered souls, souls yearning for the shore of lightness and floral display to show its face amongst the battering waves of the dark seas of despair. .

The confident flowing hand led him on through fifteen closely inscribed pages offering hope and resignation in equal parts and assuring him that new associations, new challenges and joys awaited him as they awaited her and all those whose spirits were undamped and unbowed. In Sympathy and Affectionate Hope, the writer concluded and gave a Chicago address beneath the ecstatic looping flourish of her name: Madame Maude Miriam Noel.

She was sunk into the sofa in Norma ’s sitting room — or living room, as they called it here — taking a cup of tea and idly shifting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle round the end table for lack of anything better to do, when Norma came in with the mail. Outside, beyond the gray frame of the window, the weather was dreary, funereal clouds strung from the rooftops like laundry hung out to dry, and so cold even the dirty gray ratlike pigeons were huddled against it, dark motionless lines of frozen feathers and arrested beaks blighting the eaves as far as she could see down both sides of the block. She hadn’t been out of the house in two days, hadn’t been out of her wrapper, because this cold was like some sort of cosmic joke, a cold beyond anything Paris had seen since the glaciers withdrew in some unfathomable prehistoric epoch when people still went round dwelling in caves. Chicago. How could anyone ever possibly live here?

Of course, she reminded herself, she was a refugee now, 91and would have to make the best of it. And Norma was sweet, she was, though the apartment was cluttered and overheated, the wallpaper ludicrous, the decor what you might expect of a curio shop, and where was her daughter’s taste? Had she learned nothing from her mother’s example? Inherited nothing? Was it all Emil, then, was that it? Her dead husband’s face waxed a moment in her consciousness, and he’d been a good man, really, quiet, considerate, supportive, but with just about as much artistic sensibility in his entire body as she possessed in one little finger. The apartment. Norma’s clothes. Her son-in-law. She felt the anger come up in her in a buoyant rush, the words already forming on her tongue, wounding words, nagging, but constructive, reconstructive, because it was a tragedy to live like this, to, to — when Norma said, “Mama, there’s something here for you.”

And then it was in her hand, an off-white envelope decorated with a single red square in the lower left-hand corner and above it the initials FLLW. She set down her teacup. It might have been her imagination, but the day seemed to brighten just perceptibly, as if the sun really did exist out there somewhere amidst all that gloom. The anger she’d felt so intensely just a moment earlier dissolved in a sunset glow of warmth and satisfaction. Norma was studying her. “What is it, Mama?” she asked, an anticipatory smile on her lips. “Good news?”

Miriam didn’t answer, not right away. She was going to take her time because she didn’t have to open the letter, not yet — she already knew what it would say, more or less. He would thank her in an elaborate, courtly way. Express how deeply moved he was to hear of her commiseration and how truly he wished to return the sentiment. He would be intrigued too — he had to know who she was who could know his heart so intimately. There would be all this and more: an invitation. To meet. At his studio. His home. A grand room someplace, one of his shining creations, lit softly with his exquisite lamps, the light of the hearth gathering overhead in the oiled beams, his prints and pottery emerging from the shadows to lend the perfect accents. He would be honored, et cetera, and he didn’t mean to be impertinent in any way, but he just had to see her — see this marvel of perception — in the flesh, if only for the briefest few fleeting moments.

Of course, as is often the case, the reality of a given situation doesn’t necessarily accord with one’s expectations — her years with Emil had brought that home to her, resoundingly — and the architect’s response wasn’t quite what she’d hoped for. He was intrigued, yes, how could he help but be? And yet he was distant too because he didn’t know her, couldn’t begin to see her true self through the impress of her pen — he might have thought she was some overheated spinster with a poetic bent, another parlor philosopher, one more petitioner reaching out to cling to his feet as he ascended the Olympus of architecture — and there was no invitation.

Though certainly he was interested. She could sniff that out in the first few lines, anyone could. And she immediately wrote back, her second missive even more effusive than the first (and why not? — she was too great and giving a soul to restrain her feelings) and this time she told him more about herself, about her flight from Paris, her romantic yearnings, her life lived in the service of her art, and she found a dozen ways to praise his genius that had revolutionized the very highest art of them all for an entire generation. In a postscript she begged for a meeting, however brief, because her heart simply wouldn’t rest to think of him alone in his torment. She signed herself, In All Sympathy and Hope, Madame Noel.

The reply came by return mail. He would be pleased to receive her in his studio at Orchestra Hall 92and perhaps, if time allowed and she was willing, to show her some recent examples of his own art. Would five o’clock, Thursday, suit her? If not, he’d be happy to arrange another date and time. He awaited her reply and looked forward with great pleasure to meeting her. And he was, just as she’d expected, faithfully hers, Frank Lloyd Wright.

She spent three hours on her clothes and makeup, rejecting one outfit after another until she settled on a clinging gown of chartreuse velvet cut to show her throat, shoulders and arms to best advantage. She powdered her face, did her eyes and lips, brushed out her hair — and her hair was her glory, always had been, as abundant as a debutante’s and not a single thread of gray showing through the russet curls that fell en masse at the nape of her neck — and then, after a painstaking inspection in the full-length mirror, she looked to her jewelry. A selection of rings — the scarab, of course — her diamond and seed pearl cross with the rose gold chain to bring his eyes to her throat, the lorgnette trailing languidly from its silk ribbon. She wanted him to see her as she was, au courant, cultured, a gifted artist who’d exhibited at the Louvre and was trés intime with the salons of Paris, a woman of stature and character, the natural beauty whose presence and refinement made all the rest of the women toiling along the streets of the Windy City seem like so many mutts. “How do I look?” she called out to Norma as she swept into the living room. And Norma, bless her, gazed up at her mother in genuine awe. “Oh, Mama, you look like you just stepped out of the Paris rotogravure!”