Loving Frank (35 page)

“Just now.”

She flicked her eyes toward a nearby chair, and he pulled it over to sit across from her.

“I won’t stay long—I know you came here to be alone. I just wanted to say something to you.”

Frank’s eyes were watery, drooping. She nodded.

“I’ve never been a good friend to anybody. I don’t know how to be. I’m stunted in that way. I have always felt as if I could take what I wanted because I deserved it. I thought it was my reward.” He bent his head and momentarily pressed a thumb and forefinger to his closed eyes. “For the hard work I did, for what I gave to the world. And the world has put good and kind people in my path who have indulged me and propped me up and not allowed me to fall flat on my face when I should have. It’s my gift, you see, that causes people to make allowances.” He smiled ruefully. “I know that. Contrary to what you may think, my conscience haunts me. There are nights I can’t sleep for the pain I have caused.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry I failed you as a friend. You of all people.”

Mamah stared at him impassively.

When she did not respond, he stood up. “I will try to put the shambles of this soul of mine into some kind of decent order. If you never wanted to see me again, I would understand. I cannot tell you how much I regret that I pushed you to this point.”

The room was stifling. She could smell the lone grapefruit she had noticed the night before, rotting in a bowl.

She sighed. “Pull me up,” When she extended her arm, it felt heavy as lead. “I need some fresh air.”

THEY WALKED NORTH
along the lake, stepping off the path from time to time to slog through the sand.

“There are things you need to hear, Frank. The truth is, I don’t know if you really can change the worst of it. You’ve worked yourself into quite a corner. We both have.

“Right now I feel as if my world is the size of a nickel. And worth about that much. I’ve done what you’ve done—we’ve cut ourselves off from everyone. Perched ourselves on high ground up there at Taliesin, like moral monarchs. But we know the emperors wear no clothes, don’t we?

“I blame myself for plenty. I’ve been an expert at self-deception. But you…”

They had stopped and were facing out toward the east, where sunlight flashed on the lake’s waves like neon.

“Look at yourself. As gifted as you are, you’re holed up at Taliesin, cursing the architects who once worked for you, behaving like an arrogant ass. How dare you diminish Marion Mahony! I don’t care if she married Walter Griffin. Marion was your translator, Frank. She made you comprehensible to people who didn’t understand your work. She helped you sell yourself, not to mention the fact that she burped your babies. Why can’t you give other people credit? Are you that fragile?”

Mamah waited for him to say something, but he stared straight ahead, blotting his eyes with the heel of his hand. She saw that he could be browbeaten when he was down, but she could not stop herself.

“You’ve made yourself into a tragic figure in your own mind. You go from feeling persecuted one minute to being God’s annointed messenger the next.” She kicked the wet sand with the toe of a shoe. “Why do you have to be grandiose? Why do you buy things you can’t afford? You don’t pay people…
little
people! The very first ones who should be paid.”

She shook her head in exasperation. “You say you’re at a fork in the road. We shall see. I think you’ve been this way a long time. I know about your father leaving and your mother’s coddling and all your blessed relatives’ persecution. None of it is an excuse. How many times have you said, ‘It’s the space inside that’s the reality of a structure’? And what you put into that space will shape how you live. For God’s sake, Frank. Can’t you see that that’s true of your own heart?”

They walked for what seemed like miles, but he remained silent, his face downcast. For a moment the swell and release of her fury had felt righteous. In the ten years she’d known him, she had never spoken so brutally to him as she had in the past couple of days. Nor had he ever been so contrite. But she did not enjoy humiliating him, and she felt spent.

“Look,” Mamah said when they stopped to turn back. “You’re a grown man, and you have to choose what kind of person you’re going to be. You can go on living from one financial crisis to the next. You can go on cheating people and making yourself ridiculous with your talk about hewing to a higher standard than the common man. Or you can actually make good on that talk.”

At the coach house, they stood in front of the door. “Come back home,” he said.

She sat down on a low wall to brush the sand off her shoes. When she looked up, the brown circles under his eyes seemed darker.

“No,” she said. “you need time to think about all the things that must be fixed. It is no small change you are commiting yourself to if you want to remain with me.”

IN THE DAYS
that followed, Mamah walked Chicago’s streets, glad for the anonymity they afforded. It was refreshing to be among these open-faced people, going about their lives. She and Frank had become strange in their isolation and self-absorption. She went to the library that week and sat reading poetry. She happened upon some lines in a Wordsworth poem that seemed to sum up Frank Lloyd Wright: “There is a dark / Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles / Discordant elements, makes them cling together / In one society.” Frank was his own society, a one-man band of transcendental harmony and discordant cymbals.

She had believed all along that his soul was visible in his work. That he was what he believed, as true to his ideals as any human could be. But she had not seen that there were missing pieces. What dark inscrutable workmanship had left such holes in his conscience? Did Frank lie because he was insecure, because he had never finished a formal education? Did he promote himself as a natural genius because he lacked a university diploma?

It was possible, though unlikely. He had enormous confidence in his gift. She thought of the story Catherine used to tell about when they were newly married. The great Daniel Burnham came to Frank and offered to send him to be schooled in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. It was an extraordinary honor to be called out of the crowd in that way by such a powerful and brilliant architect. It would have assured a comfortable life for Frank and Catherine and their children.

“And Frank said no,” Catherine would say in mock exasperation when she told the story. Both times Mamah had heard it, the tale had provoked amusement among dinner guests, who enjoyed speculating on how Oak Park would look if Frank had had a classical education.

What courage for a young man, Mamah had thought when she heard the story. What confidence in his own artistic instincts. How often had she heard him say
I’d rather be honestly arrogant than hypocritically humble
? It took a superior attitude not to succumb to the rewards of joining the establishment.

Unfortunately, the attitude had become his persona; he believed it himself now. He had come to mistake his gift for the whole of his character.

The memory of the Daniel Burnham story stubbornly inserted Catherine Wright into her mind. Mamah had no illusions anymore that they could one day sit down and talk. Catherine would go on withholding herself, refusing to compromise, keeping Mamah an “illicit” woman until they were all dust. The price both of them had paid for loving Frank was dear indeed.

ON THE SIXTH DAY,
Frank appeared at the door, clutching a bouquet of flowers. “From your garden,” he said. His whole body looked contrite.

A strong wind came off Lake Michigan as they walked along the shore. He was the one talking this time.

“A long time ago, you and I promised to keep each other honest. If you come back to Taliesin with me, I can change. I’m going to get rid of the rottenness inside me, Mame. But I can’t do it without you. I need you there every day, to tell me the truth.”

She held on to her hat in the wind. It felt comforting to be walking next to him. She tried to imagine what their lives would look like if she did go back. Once she had wanted to marry him. Not that a marriage certificate meant anything, but it seemed to be the one item that could change their status so they might have normal lives. It seemed the only solution to their problems. “If Catherine would just let go” had been their mantra for so long. Now Mamah understood Catherine’s dilemma better. She wouldn’t divorce Frank because she feared he wouldn’t pay her child support and alimony. And there was revenge to be sure: By refusing to divorce after twenty years of accommodating him, Catherine was squeezing recompense from Frank for a longstanding emotional debt. But that was only part of it. Catherine held on because she still loved him, and remembered what it was like to be loved by him. Nothing else in the world compared to the incandescent joy Frank brought to his best beloved.

To never have known him or known his love for her—what a loss that would have been.

If Mamah could marry him now, though, she doubted she would. If she went back, she would either have to separate his finances from hers, or completely take over all of them. It would be a trial either way.

The pluck of her father; the faith of her mother. Those were the traits that would be required to get through the rough spots ahead. She hoped she’d inherited enough of both.

“The children are what matters now,” she said. “There is some major mending to do, if they will permit it. I can’t be spending all my time worrying if you have paid your bills.”

“I understand,” he said.

Out on the water, a sailboat was struggling toward harbor. It heeled over suddenly in a great gust of wind. She stopped walking to watch the boat until it righted itself.

“Last week,” she said, “I went out to Oak Park and I begged Lizzie to forgive me for treating her life as less important than my own. I don’t know if she ever will. But I wanted so much for her to see that there is some good in me. I think that’s what you want, Frank.

“If you had asked me to forgive you even two days ago, I would have said no. But if I can’t believe in your chance to change, how can I believe in my own? How can I ask Lizzie to wipe the slate clean if I can’t find it in my heart to forgive you?”

Mamah saw the furrows soften to joy in his face. It was a thing to see. It was genuine. There was so much in Frank Wright that was noble and gallant and good. Maybe she was the world’s biggest fool, but she knew she’d go back with him and try to start over. But from here on out, it was a life of vigilance that she was in for.

Still, standing here and gazing at his face, she knew it was love that filled the space inside her. And she couldn’t help believing that love, more than anything else, would divine the way to a better place.

  1914  

CHAPTER
46

J
ohn poked around in the living room, inspecting objects that had appeared since the previous summer. The rugs and chairs Frank had bought were long gone; only the Steinway remained from his mad shopping spree. Still, there were plenty of exotic new things to keep the boy interested. He lifted the lid off a brass incense pot and sniffed inside, then trailed his fingers down the long table to a Buddha statue, where he paused to rub its belly. He explored until he found what he said was the best thing in the room: a fox skin flung over the back of a chair.

Martha sat on the edge of the living room window seat, stroking Lucky’s big head. The girl’s own head was bent down toward his, her soulful, black-fringed eyes locked on his almost-human face. The dog had a raffish air about him, with bushy brows and a beard, and a downturned mouth that almost begged for a pipe to be stuck in it. Mamah knew Lucky for what he was, a beggar who charmed scraps out of the toughest party. And Martha was anything but tough, except to her mother.

The girl kept her coat on, saying she was cold in the room. Her stockinged legs and new black patent-leather boots with pointed toes dangled below the hem of the coat. She was such a beautiful, solemn child. Mamah wanted to embrace her, to devour her. Instead, she picked up a letter from a table and pretended to read it.

Two hours earlier, when Edwin had delivered the children to Spring Green, he’d glanced at them smothering the dog in hugs. “Martha picked out the shoes she’s wearing,” he’d said, nodding in her direction. He’d shrugged, smiling. “She has a mind of her own when it comes to clothes.”

Mamah had laughed. “She likes fancy, it appears.”

It had been a welcome exchange—brief, but enough to make her feel as if an ocean had been traversed. She wanted to say more. She wanted to say that Martha was tall, like Edwin’s side, and that John had his father’s gentle nature. But it would have been too intimate. Talking about John and Martha had once been the greatest pleasure between her and Edwin, but it wasn’t hers to have anymore. Something had opened just then on the platform, though. Next time she would venture more.

When Edwin climbed onto the Chicago-bound train, Mamah walked the children over to the dry-goods store. “Let’s get you both some overalls and boots,” she said. “You’re in farm country now.”

Martha sulked when her mother pulled heavy brown boots from a rack along the wall. “Those are ugly.”

“Just try them on, Martha. Mud and cowpies can ruin your nice shoes pretty fast.” The girl grudgingly put her feet into the boots.

“Yours fit, too?” Mamah asked John.

He looked pleased. “Yup.”

Outside the store, Mamah had stood still when she heard a familiar throaty trill overhead. Near the street, a round-bellied farmer was pointing at the sky. “The cranes are back,” he said.

“THERE’S A SQUIRREL IN THE HOUSE
,” John said now. He pointed to the woodpile.

Sure enough, a squirrel had gotten in through one of the windows. He stood atop a log, his tiny paws wrapped around the stem of a stalk of wheat he must have pulled from one of Frank’s arrangements. The animal was working at the unopened wheat buds as a child might eat a piece of corn. Flakes of chaff snowed onto the wood around him. When Mamah stepped closer, the squirrel froze in midbite.

Martha watched, as still as the squirrel, from across the room. Small animal visits were something Mamah had grown used to, but the squirrel’s appearance was clearly alarming to the children. In fact, even the pile of wood where the squirrel was perched must have seemed peculiar to them. Taliesin was part camp, part art gallery. People didn’t stack half-cords of wood in their Oak Park living rooms the way Frank did here. If Martha or John looked long enough, they would come upon spiders merrily weaving webs among the split logs, a condition Elinor surely wouldn’t tolerate in her house. But neither would she hang a painted silk kimono on the wall.

Mamah opened a door and shooed the squirrel toward it, but the animal hopped across the floor and jumped up on the window seat. Martha leaped up with a screech and fled across the room, setting the dog to barking. At that moment Mamah remembered herself as a girl of nine, a Sarah Bernhardt in training, weeping over stray cats and imagined insults, hieing herself to her room in snits, passing hours reading dime novels.

“If we open all the doors,” Mamah said, hurrying to do so, “he’ll find his own way out.” Martha’s shrieks continued until the squirrel made his exit.

Part of the strangeness of this visit was the fact that the children were here out of season. During their long visit last year, they had accustomed themselves to summer playmates and hot weather. It was spring now, and cool. The place was full of new people out in the courtyard. And there was an air of excitement and tension throughout the household.

In the past week, Mamah had questioned her decision to invite the children up over Easter. The Midway Gardens job had turned into something of a nightmare. The owners wanted the place to open June first. Workmen had been excavating and building on the south Chicago site since the beginning of March. And even at this late date, Frank kept changing his mind about the details.

He had brought in Emil Brodelle to do drafting, and the deadline pressure was palpable in the workroom, where Frank sat designing and redesigning. At one point Mamah had walked into the studio just as Frank snatched Emil’s latest drawing from his table, crumpled it, and threw it with a “Goddammit!” into the wastebasket. Mamah had stepped out of the room quickly and gone to the kitchen to cook. She was careful to respect Frank’s domain. They were both careful about a lot of things now.

Emil was not the only new face at Taliesin. There was also David Lindblom, a young Swedish immigrant who tended the orchard and gardens. And there were Tom Brunker and Billy Weston. Sometimes Billy brought his son, Ernest, over to help in the garden, as he had today. And another face was about to join the crowd: Frank had hired a Japanese cook while they were abroad. But the man was having trouble getting into the country, and in the interim Mamah was once more cooking for a crowd.

If the family at Taliesin kept changing, so did the children. Martha was not the little girl who’d spent last summer on horseback. Mamah could see that she had begun to have a private, interior life. As had John. What a shock it had been when she saw John climb off the train. His hair was parted down the middle, a sure sign that he had begun to take notice of himself in the mirror. A sense of urgency had gripped Mamah. She’d lost so much time with them, and there was much to get done. How to squeeze into these visits the kind of moments that had given her such pleasure as a child? This visit she wanted to invite the neighbor kids over to put on a play or talent show, maybe plan a tree fort they could build this summer. But she dared not force any of it. Each reunion required a slow series of adjustments until they all breathed the same air easily.

“FRANK,” MAMAH SAID SOFTLY.
He was lost in concentration at his table, his forehead in his palm.

Emil saw her and the children standing at the studio door. “Mr. Wright,” he said.

Frank looked up, his eyes glazed.

“Is this a bad time?” Mamah asked.

“Martha! John!” he called out. He stood up, his arms flung wide as he walked to them. When he saw the girl’s stiffness, he checked himself, extending his hand to each of them and bowing a little for Martha. “There is never a bad time for these two.”

“I thought you might want to show them what you’re working on.”

“I can tell they’re interested.” Frank’s eyes were teasing.

“Sure.” John was all politeness. Martha slumped, her back an arc of disappointment.

“Frank is designing a place in Chicago that I will take you to when it’s done. It’s a huge building that will have an indoor garden for winter concerts and an outdoor area with a beer garden and a bandshell.”

“Like the amusement park in Forest Park?” John asked.

“Well, no roller coasters or rides,” she said. “It will be like no place you’ve ever been. You’ve heard of the hanging gardens of Babylon, haven’t you?”

“Third grade,” John said.

“Well, it’s going to be a little like the paintings you see of those gardens. It will have lots of levels—”

“Do you still have that horse, Champion?” Martha asked abruptly.

“I do,” Frank said.

“Can we go riding?”

“We can.”

“When?”

Frank turned toward the window as if he were gauging how much daylight was left.

“The cranes are back,” Mamah offered.

“Why didn’t you say so? Let’s go now.”

Emil looked up in disbelief. “Sir, Mueller says they can’t go forward with the architect’s box unless—”

Frank put on his hat. “You do know Paul Mueller and I built Unity Temple together, don’t you, Brodelle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mueller knows how to wait.”

The four of them rode on horseback down the driveway and out along the county road, until Frank turned off onto a small road. They followed it past wooded areas and fields to a boggy, nearly flooded area. Frank found a stand of trees where they tied up their horses.

“It’s not a long walk.” He searched around the ground and found four straight branches. “Don’t fall over in the mud,” he said, handing out the staffs. Frank went first through the high wet grass, followed by the children. Mamah brought up the rear, just behind Martha, whose new boots sank an inch or two in the mud with every step. Up ahead, Frank turned around, made a “shhh” gesture with his finger. Soon they stood in a clearing.

Beyond them was a meadow of grass and, here and there, pools of standing water. A dozen gray sandhill cranes, their heads capped in red, stood in the great puddles. Two cranes were just landing, descending from the sky with their wings wide and their long skinny legs hanging down, like parachutists. The cranes in the water threw their red skulls back and called out.

“I used to come to this very place when I was a boy,” Frank whispered. “But there aren’t as many cranes now. People hunt them. I don’t know how they are for eating. Never tasted one.”

Mamah passed around the field glasses she’d brought. They took turns watching as the cranes straightened their necks and beaks into spires pointed at the sky.

“Those fellas are probably just arriving from South America,” Frank said, gesturing toward the birds that had just landed. “That’s what they do. Every year they fly thousands of miles south. They could probably stop in California or Mississippi and wait out the winter, but they don’t.”

“Why?” Martha said.

“Because it’s their nature. They do what feels right to them.”

Mamah had the field glasses to her eyes. “I like to think about how they only know what they know.”

John looked at her blankly.

“What I mean is, they probably don’t care a whit about people. We’re ants to them, at best. They don’t know anything about governments or cooking or newspapers or religion. What they see is water and fields and sky. They don’t have words for them like we do. Yet they
know
them. And they know among themselves all kinds of things that we don’t know, things about the wind, and how to find the places along the way that they return to every year. Maybe they have a language we know nothing about. Their experience of this planet is completely different from ours, but it’s just as real.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll see them dance,” Frank said.

“They dance?” Martha asked.

“Sometimes. They mate for life, and when it’s time to have babies, they do a dance.”

The four of them crouched down, waiting. After a while their legs began to ache, and they stood up to go home.

“Look,” Mamah said.

In the tall grasses, the cranes had begun a kind of minuet—bowing, jumping, flapping their wings. They paused to throw back their heads and call, then commenced feinting or digging up tufts of grass from the mud.

“There’ll be some eggs soon,” Frank said.