Loving Frank (34 page)

Frank was excavating a hole they’d never climb out of. What seemed worst of all to her was the fact that so many of the betrayed lenders were his friends. In a file marked
SHUGIO
, she found a recent letter from the Japanese guide asking for more money, saying, in the kindest terms, that he’d been shortchanged.

If Frank were in this room,
she thought,
I would strangle him with my own hands.

ON FRIDAY MORNING,
when Billy showed up, she went out into the driveway.

“There’s something weighing on me I must talk to you about, Billy.”

The carpenter, usually unflappable, looked taken aback.

“You buy supplies all the time for Frank, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I found some bills last night, a lot of them, for lumber and supplies. They appear to be unpaid. I need you to tell me the truth. Is Frank not paying his bills?”

He tilted his head to the side, massaged the tough cords that ran up the front of his neck like ropes. “He always pays me on time.”

“I know you know, Billy. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but it’s too late for that. Just say yes or no. When you go back to buy more, will they give you credit?”

“I can’t…” He looked up at her. “It’s not my place.”

That evening she waited. When Frank traveled to Chicago, he left his car at the train station in Spring Green. It would be around seven by the time he drove back to Taliesin from the station. Most Fridays she had dinner in the oven. In winter they sat in their chairs in front of the fireplace and talked about their time apart, what had happened, before they sat down to eat. In summer she had begun to wait out in the tea circle for him to come home. But tonight she would remain inside. She sat on the window seat in the living room and smoked one cigarette after another.

When Frank walked through the door, he grasped the situation in a glance.

“I wanted to be here when it arrived,” he said, “but they flatly refused to give me an exact delivery day.” He set down his briefcase and began pacing around, looking at the rolled-up carpets and the piano. He stopped moving and stared at her. He was not accustomed to seeing her smoke. When he approached her to kiss the top of her head, as he always did when he returned, her hand flew up to block him.

He drew back. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s paid for. All of it.” His face was furrowed. “We’ve been here two years now. Don’t you think it’s time for some rugs?”

“And a grand piano?”

“I need a good piano. It helps me work.” Frank looked bewildered. He pointed to the Chinese rug. “I thought you would love it.”

Mamah got up and went to his studio, returning with a fistful of unpaid bills. She threw them on the floor, then bent down and picked one up. “Why don’t we invite Mr. Howard Fuller in for a party? Let’s ask him if he finds the rug beautiful. After all, you owe him two hundred dollars. I’d say he’s an investor in it.”

“Mamah—”

“How could you squander what little goodwill we have among these people? Are you incapable of shame?”

He turned away. “I’ll talk to you when you’re ready to discuss this calmly.”

Mamah grabbed his shoulder and swung him around with a force that stunned both of them. “You will talk to me now.” Her voice came through clenched teeth. “You will fix this.
Fix
this!” She swept her arm around the room. “You will return all this, and you will pay the people you owe money to. And you will ask their forgiveness for your arrogance in not doing it sooner. Starting with Josiah. Do you understand me?”

He stared at her, his face pinched in disbelief.

“Do you?”
she shouted.

Frank let out a sigh and put up both palms. “Fine.”

“Catherine knew what I didn’t know. That you don’t pay people. That’s why she won’t divorce you, isn’t it? She’s afraid, isn’t she, that once you’re free, she won’t get a red cent out of you?”

His silence made her angrier.

“How dare you talk about ‘democratic architecture.’ You hypocrite! You have nothing but contempt for the little man and you cheat him whenever you get a chance. I cannot imagine how you could cheat Josiah after all he’s done for us.” She swiped at tears running down her face. “But then I suppose I can. You are a man of such
refined
sensibilities. You must have your beautiful things.”

Mamah turned and walked back to the bedroom. She lay down and flung an arm over her face. Sobs welled up in great waves.

After a while he was standing at the door. “Mame,” he pleaded.

“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she cried. “I left my children for a liar.”

“I don’t know why—”

“Get out. Go sleep at Jennie’s. I’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” She covered her face with her arm again.

“Please don’t…”

She would not speak anymore. He could stand there all night, but she would not open her mouth. Finally she heard him shuffle down the hall and go out the door.

IN THE MORNING,
Mamah packed a bag. She would get the key from him for the coach house in Chicago where he slept when he was working there. It struck her that she had nowhere else to go. She hadn’t a single close friend left to whom she could turn.

When she walked out into the living room, he was standing there, freshly shaved.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“In the car. You can take me to the train.”

“Are you going into Chicago?”

“Yes. I need the key to your place.”

Frank drove toward Spring Green slowly. “If I have not been good at managing money,” he said, “if I have left some fellow holding the bag, it was not out of malice.”

“Why do you go out and buy things you can’t afford? Because it makes you feel bigger?”

He shook his head sadly. “For a sense of completeness.”

“For God’s sake, Frank.”

“When I find beautiful things, it feels as if they are necessary
tools
for my life. I can’t bear to have old junk around, disturbing the peace. Better a space be empty. But we have been here two years, and when I saw the chairs and rugs, I had to buy them—for my sanity, Mamah. Can you possibly understand that? It’s part of finishing a piece of art.”

She stared out the window. “Where did the money come from?”

Frank exhaled heavily.

“The truth or nothing.”

“I owed back rent at Orchestra Hall.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen hundred. They’d been after me, and then, about ten days ago, the sheriff came around and was threatening to…” Frank ran his hand over his mouth. “Well, what do you know, William Spaulding came through the front door of the office at that moment. So John—my son was there—he kept the sheriff busy while I sold William a set of woodblock prints.”

“How much did he give you for the prints?”

Frank paused and cleared his throat.

“You have one chance to tell me the story, Frank, and if you don’t give the whole of it, it’s over with.”

“Ten thousand. He gave me ten thousand dollars for the prints. They were rare ones.”

“And then?”

“I gave the manager at Orchestra Hall fifteen hundred dollars and settled the debt.” Frank paused and adjusted the side mirror. “Then John and I went out. I wanted to pay off some other bills. We poked around Lyon and Healy, just looking. And before I knew it, I had bought the pianos.”

“There was
more than one
piano?”

His voice cracked. “I bought three. Two had to be ordered.”

“Three grand pianos.” She felt a chilling urge to laugh. “Did you spend the rest of the money at Marshall Field’s?”

“Yes.” He was quiet for a while. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you. There’s going to be big money coming in soon. I’m going to be doing a huge hurry-up job in Chicago. It’s an enormous concert garden, like the beer gardens we saw in Berlin. But much bigger. Midway Gardens. I’ve started on it already.”

“Have you been paid for it?”

“No, not yet.”

Mamah stared out the car window.

“I know,” he said, “it’s madness.” He shook his head. “You can’t imagine. I hold off, and then this pent-up desire to buy things comes on. I don’t expect you to understand it, but it all springs from the same place—the good and the bad. This impulse to arrange things in space, to make harmony out of the right objects in relation to each other. What can I say? It’s an insatiable—”

“Affliction,” she said. “It’s a sickness, Frank. You cannot use your gifts to justify cheating other people. There’s no harmony to be had when you cheat the lumberman so that you can have a grand piano. Do you think genius somehow trumps responsibility? You’re not helpless in this.”

They didn’t speak for the remainder of the drive. When she opened the car door at the station, he grasped her hand. “Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

She climbed out of the car. “It’s more than the spending. It’s so many things in you. And I don’t know if they’re things you can change.” She closed the door and turned away.

“Mamah,” he called after her, but she walked into the station house entrance and couldn’t hear him anymore.

CHAPTER
45

W
hen Mamah arrived in Chicago, she bought two boxes of candy in the train station, took a taxi to the Cedar Street pied-à-terre, where she left her bag, then returned to the waiting taxi. “Wabash and Washington, please,” she said.

She climbed up to the El platform and rode the train out to Oak Park, watching as the west side of Chicago sped by. There were so many changes since she’d last taken the train. New apartment buildings. Gorgeous gardens around Garfield Park Conservatory. As the train entered the suburb of Oak Park, she could see that it had changed, too. The elms and oaks lining the streets were as lovely as she remembered them, but everywhere, new houses had sprouted up between the old ones. She looked toward the north prairie where she had taken John every June to pick strawberries, where she had lain once under the moon with Frank. It was dotted now with new roofs.

Mamah walked briskly toward East Avenue, glancing furtively at the people who passed. For four years she’d feared this moment, but she saw not one familiar face. In the past she couldn’t walk down the street without being hailed by someone.

Lizzie was on summer vacation from school and might not be home. Mamah stood in front of the house. Everything was just as she had left it, even the gardens. She glanced up at the window where the Belknap girls had stood, probably watching her and Frank as they’d made love. She shuddered. It was still boarded up. The carpenter had done a fair job, but there was no disguising it. She looked down quickly, fearful that Lulu Belknap might be staring at her right now.

Mamah let herself through the gate and walked on the path to the rear of the house. She rapped on the glass doors, but Lizzie didn’t answer. She could see for herself that Lizzie wasn’t in the apartment. Inside, nothing looked different. Mamah went back around to the side of the house, summoned her courage, and knocked on the screen door. In a minute a pretty blond woman appeared.

Elinor Millor, the new Mrs. Cheney, nearly fell backward. “Mamah?”

“Yes, I’m Mamah.”

“Come in.” She held the door open.

“You must be Elinor.”

“I am.” The woman fingered the little pleats at her collar, her face dumbstruck.

“I don’t mean to bother you. I was only here to see Lizzie, and the children, if they are around. I know I should have called you.”

“Lizzie was here just a half hour ago. She lives downstairs.”

“I know.”

“Oh, of course you know. What am I thinking?” The woman pushed fine strands of hair from her forehead. “The children are not here. Martha is with her father. They’ve gone to the lake. John had a baseball game. He’s over at the school field.”

“I see.”

“Let me go look for Lizzie. Please sit down.”

Mamah glanced around. The living room was spotless and nearly exactly as it had been when she’d left. There were a few new touches. An unfamiliar lace tablecloth on the dining table. White eyelet curtains on the library windows.

“She must have gone off to the grocery store. She said earlier that was what she was going to do. You can wait. It’s no trouble at all. In fact, I just made lemonade.”

“Thank you.”

When Elinor returned, she sat across from Mamah in front of the fireplace. She busied herself with the glasses and napkins, taking a long draft from her drink before settling on something to say. “The garden you planted is very lovely.”

“Elinor,” Mamah began, “it’s kind of you to invite me in. Lizzie and Edwin have spoken so lovingly of you. I want you to know that I appreciate how good you have been to my children.”

Elinor shook her head. “Oh, no, please. It’s so easy. I love them.” She seemed about to say something more, her mouth half open, but she produced no sound. An awkwardness hung in the air.

“I brought something for John and Martha,” Mamah said. “Just the gumdrops they like. May I put these on their beds?”

If Elinor saw through her feeble ruse to go into the children’s rooms, she didn’t reveal it. “Absolutely. Go right ahead.”

Mamah walked down the hall to John’s room first. She stepped inside and let her eyes adjust to the afternoon dimness. The space had changed. This was an eleven-year-old boy’s room now, with baseball pennants on the wall and a paperboy’s bag hanging by its strap over his desk chair. There was no evidence of the colorful train set that had once enchanted him, or any sign of the dozens of gifts she had sent him from Germany and Italy. As she looked around, a warm breeze lifted the curtains to reveal a row of fossil-encrusted sandstone chunks placed along the windowsill. Her throat ached with gladness. The few fossils they had gathered together when he was six had expanded into a collection.

“El!” Mamah heard Lizzie’s voice at that moment, calling from somewhere outside. “Can you please open the screen? My arms are full.”

“Coming,” Elinor called back.

Mamah felt like an intruder, yet she hurried to Martha’s door. She dropped the box of candy on the frilly bedcover. Her daughter’s room was wallpapered now in a sunny flower print. Dolls were everywhere.

Mamah slipped out of the room and walked down the hall into the kitchen, where Lizzie was unloading food from two large bags of groceries. The corners of her mouth fell when she saw her sister.

“Let me help you,” Mamah said.

THEY WENT OUT
the front sidewalk and up East Avenue. “I’ve been desperate to see you, Liz. We haven’t talked in so long.” Her sister remained taciturn. “I’ve missed you so.”

Lizzie walked along slowly, not returning Mamah’s glance. She looked older. What softness there had been in her strong, chiseled face had been filed away by the past few years. She was all angle and bone.

“The truth is, I came to apologize to you for all the trouble I’ve put you through. I’ve told you before, but I cannot say it enough. I bless you every day for stepping in and taking care of the children. I never could have stayed in Berlin without your help.”

“It was for John and Martha, whatever I did.”

Mamah inhaled. Lizzie’s square jaw, so like her own, was set hard.

“Do you think I don’t know how they suffered?”

“I don’t know what you know anymore, Mamah.”

“I know that you suffered, too, Liz. You’ve always been so private and dignified. I can only imagine the harassment you have endured. It was unremitting for us. We had reporters looking in the windows up at Taliesin—”

“Oh,
did
you?” The sarcasm in Lizzie’s voice was lacerating.

“I never meant to bring all of it upon you. Surely you understand that. I have loved you and admired you all my life. You are the only true hero I have. I owe you everything.”

Lizzie reached out and stripped leaves off a twig. “You always wanted to do something big. Something
important.
”

“Is that such a terrible thing? You’re the one who told me once that the world can’t forgive ambition in a woman.”

“I never got to find out. My ambitions never seemed to figure into things. You were away at the university when Mother got sick, so it fell to Jessie and me. And you were already married by the time Jessie passed. Your life was set. Suddenly, there was a niece to raise, and then…” Lizzie paused. “Then you had your personality to go discover.” She tossed away a fistful of leaves. “You had everything. You had a wonderful man who adored you, beautiful healthy children. Freedom. No money worries. A nanny and a housekeeper. You didn’t have to work, and Edwin never asked a thing of you. Do you realize what you gave up for Frank Wright? The kind of life most women—most
feminists
—dream of.”

They walked on in silence. Mamah was desperate to shift the direction of their words. “How is Jessie doing with her father’s people?” she said finally.

“Jessie is…trying to adapt. I thought it better that she be with them, for the present, anyway. She’s not Edwin’s blood. I work all day. And now, without Louise…”

“What do you mean?”

Lizzie looked at her, puzzled. “Louise is no longer with us. I thought you knew that. Elinor didn’t think she was needed. She let her go.”

Mamah caught her breath.
Oh, Louise, you must be dead from sorrow someplace.
How could the woman turn Louise out? She had been the sun and the moon to John since he was a baby. To Martha too. “Where did she go?”

“She went to live with her brother. She’s looking for another family. I’m hoping she finds something, but Louise is fifty-one now. She may have to live at the mercy of her brother.” Lizzie wiped her forehead with a square of handkerchief. “I’ll move out eventually, too. They haven’t asked me to, but Elinor deserves her privacy.” They had circled the block and stood now at the side gate. Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. “What is it you want from me?”

Mamah reached out and took her sister’s hand. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Lizzie, but don’t cut me off, I beg of you. Please forgive me for not considering your feelings more.” Lizzie’s hand felt limp, noncommittal.

Elinor appeared, smiling. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it a fine day? I had hardly noticed.”

When Mamah turned to leave, she saw John come loping across lawns toward the house, his head down, his lips moving as if he were singing to himself. He seemed even taller now than he had when she’d seen him in April, when she was just home from Japan. As his head came up, his dark eyes grew saucerlike when he spotted her in the yard. He stopped in his tracks.

“Johnny!” Mamah walked over to him and pulled his stiff body to her in an awkward hug. “I almost missed seeing you. Will you go out with me for ice cream?”

The boy looked confused. It pained her to see him glance first at Lizzie, then at Elinor. Mamah turned to see them nodding.

“Okay.” He tossed his glove to Lizzie.

“Shall we walk to Peterson’s?”

“No,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “That’s too far.”

Too embarrassing,
Mamah thought. It was probably where his friends gathered.

“There’s a grocery store that has ice cream,” he said. “It’s just two blocks. You know that one?”

“I do. Let’s go there.”

They walked south. John caught Mamah glancing up at the Belknaps’. He said, “Ellis doesn’t live there anymore. His family moved to Wisconsin.”

“You don’t say.”

“They invited me to Waukesha to visit for a week this summer. Papa said I could take the train from there to Spring Green when I come see you.” His eyes lit up. “By myself.”

The image of John alone on the train disturbed her. She swallowed hard and struggled to put brightness in her voice. “That sounds so grown-up.”

Once more she glanced at the hulking Victorian, now empty of her nemesis. Over the past four years, whenever she’d thought of Oak Park, she could hear Lulu Belknap next door on a Sunday evening, leading her girls at the piano as they sang “Jesus, Savior, pilot me.” How strange to know the Belknaps were gone. And Louise, too.

“I understand you’ve become quite a rock collector,” Mamah said, touching her son’s arm lightly as they walked.

“Uh-huh,” he said, his head down. Subtly, he put another foot of sidewalk between them as they moved along. “Aunt Lizzie takes us.”

MAMAH’S HEAD THROBBED
all the way back to Chicago. The ache had started when she said had goodbye to John and watched him go into the house. A shapeless anger had come over her in that moment. By the time she got on the El and found a place to sit, she wanted to hammer the seat with her fist until the leather split.

She propped her elbow on the open window and pressed her knuckles against her mouth. Below, on a wet lawn, children in bathing suits sprayed each other with a hose.

So many things she hadn’t wanted to think about. But there were pictures in her mind now that wouldn’t go away.

Elinor Millor had slipped into Mamah’s old life as if it were a comfortable dress. She looked like she had been there forever, standing on the stoop, smiling and chatting with Lizzie, tousling John’s hair as he raced into the house, the sound of a banging screen door echoing behind him.

You always wanted to do something big.
Lizzie’s words burned between her ears. It was true. She
had
always wanted to make a mark, to inhabit a bigger world than Boone or Port Huron or Oak Park.

But what had she done with all that ambition? Attached herself to two colossal personalities. Spent herself on Frank Lloyd Wright and Ellen Key, who would have done great work without ever having known her. Poured her soul into defending the sanctity of the individual while John and Martha slid from her grasp.

“WILL YOU TALK TO ME?”
Frank was standing next to the chair where she had dozed off.

Mamah started at his voice. She had been dreaming, her brain replaying almost precisely the events of the afternoon she’d spent in Oak Park. Except that in the dream, Catherine Wright passed her on the street, walked behind her like a ghost, rode on the train just across from her.

Mamah stared around the room, then knew she was in Chicago, in the coach house. “When did you come in?”