T. Boyle - The Women

It was a kind of miracle. Like being on a honeymoon all over again and this little house the ship that would take them across the wide ocean into the seas of bliss. The nights were rapturous with lovemaking, the mornings sunstruck (or at least they felt that way), and while he was at his studio spinning out his designs in the company of his scurrying functionaries, she busied herself with making the house just a soupçon more comfortable — or less austere, at any rate. That was the term she used over the telephone to Leora—“He seems so austere, almost Puritanical, as if a plush pillow were a violation of the sumptuary laws or some such thing.” She selected curtains for the windows, pillows for the sofa and each of the flat hard-bottomed chairs. She ordered linens and stationery featuring their entwined initials and her familial crest. China, cutlery — carpets, for God’s sake. And his taste in cuisine: “I tell you, Leora, I try, I do — and we’ve been through two cooks already — but the only stuff he seems to like is so bland, so unappealing in every way, I couldn’t imagine a single soul in all of France, even the dirtiest peasant speaking some dialect that sounds as if he’s invented it on the spot, bothering to feed it to his hogs. No, I mean it. I do. He needs reforming. Needs a good dose of culture, beyond all his drawings and his houses, which really are exquisite, I’m not denying that, not at all—”

By the end of the second week, the punishing gray chill of January folding itself into the unrelenting arctic blast that welcomed February to the bleak canyons of Chicago, they had their first quarrel. The cook, on her instructions — and with her supervision — had prepared a lovely saumon tar-tare avec sauce moutarde for a prelude, followed by a bisque de homard, salade d’endive and a spectacular flambé of ris de veau, and she served a perfectly delicious Sancerre with the salmon and a Margaux with the sweetbreads she’d ordered herself from the wine merchant and had no little trouble finding it, incidentally, in this backwater, and he’d been less than impressed. In fact, at one point he pushed back his plate — shoved it aside as if it were something he’d found in the street — stalked into the kitchen without so much as a word and reappeared a moment later with a glass of water and an apple. While she watched, astonished, he peeled and divided the apple, feeding it into his mouth slice by slice and washing it down with the water.

“I spent all afternoon on this meal,” she said quietly, fighting to keep any hint of severity out of her voice. “And Madeline virtually slaved to bring it off.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “Tell Madeline she’s fired.”

“Fired? Why, I’ve just hired her. And she’s excellent, truly excellent — Montreal bred, perhaps, but—”

“Do I have to repeat myself? She’s fired. I’ll send to Taliesin for Nellie Breen if this is the best you can do.” He stabbed at a slice of the meat with the paring knife and held it, dripping, before him. “This sort of thing may be all the rage in Paris, but it won’t do here. We don’t eat this tripe—”

“Sweetbreads,” she corrected, and she could feel herself going hot all over. The temerity of him, the insult. He was a boor, that was what he was. A barbarian. “You’re a boor. That’s what the problem is. You need civilizing, are you aware of that?”

“And we don’t take alcoholic beverages — wine — with our meals.”

She was angry all of a sudden, so infused with rage she couldn’t speak. She laughed instead, a bitter cutting sarcastic laugh.

He was standing now, every inch of his five feet six or whatever it was clonic with fury. “Smoking,” he snarled. “It’s like living in a tobacco warehouse somebody’s set afire. It’s a disgusting habit. Totally inappropriate for a lady. And I won’t have it.”

And now the battle was joined, because she was on her feet too, ready to throw it all back at him. “Rube!” she shouted. “Hayseed!”

He gave her a look that chilled her — he was as capable of murder as any cutthroat roaming the alleys of the south side — and he actually took a step toward her, as if he would dare. Just let him, she was saying to herself, her feet braced and her body gone rigid. Just let him. But he checked himself — she saw the rational part of him take over as if a switch had been thrown, and he was afraid of her, wasn’t he? The little man, the coward. “You disgust me,” he said finally. And he turned on his heel, jerked round and strode out the door and into the black curtain of the night and he didn’t think of his cloak or his hat or the scarf that never once left his throat but when he was sitting at table or asleep in bed.

“Go!” she shrieked, darting to the door with the plate of sweetbreads and the sautéed champignons de la forêt and the sherry sauce she’d created from scratch raised in one hand. “Go, you bastard!” And the plate went with him, describing a drooling parabola across the moonlit yard till it crashed to the walk and scattered its contents for the birds and the squirrels and the scavengers of the night.

They made it up, of course — with a furious bout of lovemaking that began almost as if it were a free-fall match between two determined adversaries and ended in the sweetest surrender — but not before he went off to Wisconsin without her. For three entire days. And no word of him. Nothing. It was as if he’d never lived here, as if she’d never known him, and this house, filled with his things, was a memorial only, a tomb of nobody’s making. The first night she didn’t sleep an instant, replaying the scene over and over again in her head, wishing she’d showed more restraint, less fire and fury, because she did love him as she’d never loved anyone in her life, she was sure of it, absolutely and without question, and she missed him with an ache that echoed inside her like a cry of despair from the cored-out trunk of a withered tree. 97The following day was purgatorial, an accumulation of intolerable minutes and torturous hours that made her lash out at Madeline and the various delivery men presenting their wares, and she wouldn’t call him at his offices like some castoff baggage who can’t keep track of her man, she wouldn’t. By the close of the second day, she was certain he was deceiving her with another woman, his secretary, his wife — Kitty, that was her name, Kitty, and why not just call her cunt and get it over with? She telephoned Leora and sobbed through the thin swaying wires, telephoned Norma to tell her her mother was ruined, and finally, though she fought it, she broke down and telephoned his studio. Where the reedy wisp of an effeminate acolyte came over the line to inform her that the Master— Mr. Wright — had gone up to Taliesin to oversee the work there. And when was he expected back? Oh — a long calculated pause — he couldn’t say. After that, she had her pravaz, only that. And even then, she cried herself to sleep.

At breakfast the morning after they’d made it up he was tender with her, tender and gentle too, and they sat across the table from each other in a satiate glow, no need for words, their silence broken only by the most solicitous murmurings, Would you care for another cup of tea, dear? Cream? Can I get you another egg? Darling, if it’s not too much trouble, would you please be kind enough to pass the salt? She clung to him when he got up to leave for work, their kisses so heated he very nearly had her right there on the carpet, and when he came home the first thing she did was lead him into the bedroom. And she let Madeline go, just to please him, and that night she stood over the stove herself, half-dressed, and made him potatoes in the pan with onions and a steak au jus with no flavoring other than a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper. He never stopped talking, not even to draw breath, and after dinner he sat at the piano and serenaded her till she sank into the new plush pillows like a queen, like Cleopatra herself. He was hers, he was hers, he was hers, and the world was a good and beautiful place once again.