by Nancy Horan
She stood up and paced, her hands still moving. “I wish that you could experience one of his houses. He likes to hide the doorway so you have to find it. He leads you in, then surprises you. He calls it ‘the path of discovery.’”
Mamah paused, remembering vividly the first time she and Edwin went to visit his studio. He had met them out front, where an etched stone plaque in the wall announced CO FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, ARCHITECT, and storklike stone birds stood guard on either side of a recessed portico. A small door on the right opened into a low dark vestibule, with stucco walls of burnished gold and a stained-glass ceiling that let in dim shots of yellow and green light. Ed’s head had barely cleared the glass ceiling. Frank had smiled when Edwin reached up and touched it with his palm.
“Why so low?” Edwin asked.
“Suspense before surprise,” Frank said. “It’s designed for intimacy. So a person who’s, say, five foot seven passes through it comfortably.”
“Your height?” Ed asked.
“Designer’s prerogative,” Frank said with a smile.
When they had walked out of the vestibule into the study at the front of the Wrights’ house, Mamah was struck by the abrupt opening up of space and light, the “surprise” he had alluded to. It was when they went into the studio, though, with its walls soaring two stories up and a balcony suspended by iron chains, that she knew they would hire Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them.
Mamah found herself looking out the window now. “If you saw one of his houses,” she said to Mattie, regaining her thread, “you wouldn’t laugh when he talks about the hearth as a sort of altar to the family. It’s the heart of the house.”
“It’s the heart of his dilemma,” Mattie muttered. “The man’s values have flown right out his abstract windows.”
“I know how it sounds. And I see the seduction of it, Mattie. If I appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, then I am a person of weight and substance. I’m not entirely stupid. I’ve seen the women whose pulses beat faster when he walks into a room. He excites men just as much. He has a way of waking up your cells.”
“Have you mistaken his work for the man?”
“I’m certain I haven’t.”
Mattie’s voice grew tentative as she fiddled with the tatted edge of the sheet. “How long have you been…”
“Intimate?” Mamah looked away. When she looked back, she saw the question in her friend’s eyes. “Martha is Edwin’s child, Mattie.” Mamah felt her face burning.
“I’m sorry, Mame. I don’t mean to make it any worse than it is.”
THE ROOM WAS COOL when Mamah returned. She carried a bowl of soup.
“It’s awkward,” Mattie said, “knowing Edwin so well.”
“I know. It’s terrible. Do you hate me?”
“No, but you terrify me. I guess you always have.”
“Why?”
“You seemed reckless to me back in college—forever getting into arguments about suffrage and all. I was too busy looking for a husband to be arguing with any of the prospects. You never seemed to care.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to marry. I liked men.”
“Liked them? You were infatuated with someone new every other week.”
“Only in college. Not in Port Huron. My prospects had slimmed down quite a bit by then, if you recall. But yes, I loved the attention in college. Didn’t you? It felt so good.”
“Oh, I was looking for some solid ground in those days. You? You were looking for something else.”
“Well, can you blame me now? It’s wonderful to feel desired. There’s a sense of power in it, really.”
Mattie stirred the soup slowly. “Don’t you see what’s happened? You wanted to be in love again. To feel that feeling where a man you hardly know gazes into your eyes and seems to be the only human being who ever understood the real you.”
“I love this man more deeply than I ever dreamed possible. He loves me. His marriage has been dead for years.”
Mattie narrowed her eyes. “Have you left Edwin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you moved to Boulder without telling me, my friend? Is that why you wanted me to find you a boardinghouse?”
Mamah shook her head disconsolately. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’m here and I need to figure it out. A person can get a divorce after two years of separation. Maybe I could find work.”
“What happens if you leave Edwin and this man never leaves his family?”
Mamah leaned back and crossed her arms. “Then I shall be living honestly, at least.”
Mattie set down her spoon. “What about the children?”
“That’s the part—”
“How many does he have?”
“Six.”
Mattie flopped back into her pillow. “Have you started the change?”
“No!”
“Well, you surely are acting like it. Women do crazy things. You’ve seen those stories in the paper where a woman leaves her family to become a missionary, or shoots her husband in a fit of rage.”
“I hadn’t considered either.”
Mattie fell into a silence.
“People are divorcing more nowadays,” Mamah said after a while. “It’s not impossible.”
“No, it’s not. But if you think your choices are limited now, imagine being divorced. And who’s to say, if you got your way, you would still love him a year from now? You could end up miserable, without your children.”
“Some women get their children when they divorce. Edwin is furious right now, but given time…”
Mattie swung her legs to the side of the bed and stood up. She put her hands on Mamah’s shoulders. “Pull yourself back long enough to look at it. Take some walks. Get involved out here. In a few weeks you’re going to be saying to yourself, ‘What on earth was I thinking?’”
“But I don’t love Edwin.”
“What about duty? What about honor?” Mattie shook Mamah’s shoulders. “I know you. You wouldn’t take down two families, Mame. You couldn’t live with yourself.”
CHAPTER 12
After a week with the Browns, Mamah moved with the children into a boardinghouse run by the organist at Mattie’s church. Their little dormer bedroom in the brick and clapboard house was cramped and had only a sliver of a view of the mountains. She found the place appealing anyway. It was kitty-corner across Pine Street from the Carnegie Library, just three blocks from Mattie’s, and a short hike away from the stores on Pearl Street.
Marie Brigham was a widow, a big-boned, plain woman with a web of red veins that slid down the ridge of her nose and spread like rivulets across her cheeks. She was the classic boardinghouse landlady—a survivor. Mrs. Brigham went about her business with a cheerful matter-of-factness, changing bed linens and cooking breakfast as if she’d chosen to, as if it were not the only trade a widow could ply.
Good black coffee could be had every morning by seven, and most days Mamah and the children were at the kitchen table by then.
“It’s summer that’s the best in Boulder. No question about that.” Marie wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “There’s the annual trip to Ward over the Switzerland Trail.” She winked at John. “The train always stops so you can get out and throw snowballs.”
“Can we do that?” he asked.
“You bet,” Mamah said.
“The circus will be here in a couple of weeks. There’s a summer program over at the school. And Clara Savory’s got story hour going on every day in the library. The kids can practically…”
Marie didn’t finish all her sentences. She reached over the stove burners and lifted an iron pan off a hook, humming a little.
“One thing you got to watch for in Boulder, though,” Marie said a minute later. “Tuberculars is everywhere. They come here for the cool air, but they bring the phthisis with ’em. People in Boulder like to pretend it ain’t a problem. Bad for business, you know. But I warn my guests.” She peeled thick strips of bacon into th
e pan. “You can catch it on your shoe just walking in their spit.”
John, the worrier, bent over to have a look at his soles.
“That’s why anybody stays here,” Marie said, “has got to leave their shoes on the porch.”
Mamah and the children had fallen into line on that policy. She felt relief to be away from Oak Park, even if she was surrounded by sick people. In the mornings they walked the flagstone sidewalks, exploring the town, watching their step. The bright summer light of Colorado really did feel healthful. She thought of the streets at home, where workmen would be pouring oil about now to keep the dust clouds down, as they did every summer. Boulder’s blue skies made Chicago seem a coal mine by comparison.
She gave herself until July to clear her head. There were plenty of other things to focus on. John came down with a bad sore throat and cold the third week of their visit. His upper lip was rubbed raw from swiping it with a handkerchief.
“I hope I don’t have nose fever,” he said. He was lying on his cot next to the bed she and Martha shared. “If you drink too much sarsaparilla when you have nose fever, you can die.”
Mamah choked back a laugh. “Where did you hear such a thing?”
“Mrs. Brigham.”
She felt his forehead. “You know, people don’t always say things quite right. Even grown-ups. There’s no such thing as nose fever, sweetheart.”
Mamah vowed to get them out and around other children. They needed more friends than Linden and Anne, Mattie’s kids. A few days later, she enrolled them in the day camp at Mapleton School for a couple of mornings a week. Then she walked across the street to the library and found Clara Savory in a harried state.
“Could you use a volunteer? Maybe I could work on the card catalog?” Mamah asked.
“I would be eternally grateful,” the woman said. “I haven’t a moment for Melvil Dewey.”
Mamah worked at the library two mornings a week after that, spending an hour or two organizing the library’s collection. Sometimes she took over story hour and read to the children to give Clara a break.
In the afternoons, with the children ambling behind her, she headed to Mattie’s. Her steps always slowed as she passed a bungalow on Mapleton. It had window boxes full of orange poppies, and she found herself picturing Martha and John lolling on its wide front steps.
“LOOK IN THE PAPER,” Mattie said to Mamah one afternoon shortly after they had arrived at her house. She was sitting in a heavy oak and leather chair in the living room. “There’s a whole circus schedule in there today.”
Martha and John ran off in search of Linden and Anne while Mamah collected the newspaper from the kitchen. She had offered to take all the children to the parade and big-top performance the next day. Everyone was wildly pleased by the plan except Mamah, who hadn’t mentioned to anyone that she despised the circus. Well, not the entire circus, just the clowns—all that manufactured merriment. She pitied the elephants, too.
“Mattie, have I mentioned how bad this newspaper is?”
“The Daily Camera?”
“Since I got here, they’ve given a front-page column of every issue to Billy Sunday. And they’ve got one of his followers actually writing the column. Seriously. They put a little disclaimer up at the top, but it’s one of his own people giving Billy all this front-page coverage.”
“Oh, I know, it’s awful,” Mattie agreed. “We’re such hayseeds out here.”
“Listen to this headline,” Mamah said incredulously. “‘The dance is a sexual love-feast!’ Now I’ve got to read the thing. Let’s see…seems the Reverend Sunday met a woman at one of his revivals in New Jersey. Oh, it gets good here.
“‘She had hair like a raven’s wing,’ said Reverend Sunday, ‘a Grecian nose and great big, brown eyes, oval face and olive complexion, and long tapering fingers—a girl that anyone would turn to look at a second time, the prettiest girl that I ever saw, except my wife.’”
“He calls his wife ‘Ma.’ Isn’t that sweet?” Mattie interjected.
“Ma Sunday’s no fool.” Mamah laughed. “She travels with him. Makes sure he keeps the old tallywhacker tucked in.”
“She must know he has a weakness for tapered fingers.”
“‘She loved to do it,’” Mamah read on, injecting a lascivious tone. “‘I found her on her knees crying and I said to her: “What is the matter?” She said, “I love to do these things that you preach against.” “You mean adultery?” “Oh, no, no!” “You don’t drink whiskey, do you?” “Oh, no!” “What is the matter, then?” “Well,” she sighed, and said, “I love to dance.” ’”
Mattie laughed helplessly. “You know this isn’t going to end well.”
Mamah’s eyes skimmed down to the bottom of the column. “And sure enough, here it is. Seems she went to a dance, went home with a married fellow whose wife was away, and died in his house because he had spliced together the gas stove’s rubber hose with a garden hose.”
“Not a very bright fella, I’d say.”
“It’s all that ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ business I can’t bear,” Mamah said. “We laugh, but some people read this newspaper and actually believe it.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Hand me that paper.”
Mamah passed the newspaper over to Mattie.
“Two rolls of White Rose toilet paper cost fifteen cents on sale at Crittenden’s. I choose to believe that. Wilson Hardware is having a little puzzle contest just for girls.” Mattie turned a page. “Hmmm…the program at Chautauqua tonight has your name written all over it. They’ll be playing opera songs on the Victrola and showing stereopticon pictures of the singers. Sounds wonderful.”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah, here we are. ‘Michigan University alumni will swim and feast at Eldorado Springs Saturday. It will be a joint outing of the Rocky Mountain Association and the Woman’s U. of M. Club.’” Mattie put down the paper and looked at Mamah. “There. You have no excuses to mope around.”
“I haven’t been moping, have I?”
“Well, given the circumstances, you could be worse. What I mean is that you’re doing what you’ve always done, darlin’. You ruminate too much. Just go out and do something new. You can leave the children here anytime.”
“All right,” Mamah said. “All right.”
CHAPTER 13
In July, Edwin’s letters began to arrive at the boardinghouse. Written on Wagner Electric stationery, they all said the same thing. I love you. I forgive you. We can overcome anything.
Mattie’s husband Alden arrived home just after the Fourth with fireworks from San Francisco. He held his own independence celebration on July 6, setting off Roman candles and blazing yellow stars that chirped like orioles in the middle of the street. The children hopped up and down on the lawn, squealing while the neighbors cheered wildly. Mamah realized Alden was something of a romantic figure in Boulder, a “dashing” gold miner, if such a type existed.
During the week he was home, Mamah took dinner with him and Mattie. One night when Mattie trundled off to bed early, Alden offered Mamah wine in the den.
“Just a touch,” she said.
Alden talked on, regaling her with stories of the wild characters he’d lived with in Jamestown and other mining camps.
“Colombia!” he shouted after a couple of shots of whiskey. “That’s the next frontier.”
“You mean South America?”
“I do indeed. That’s where a man goes these days if he’s in my line of work.”
“Have you mentioned that to Mattie?”
“Not yet.” He laughed. “She has other things on her mind.”
Mamah could tell he was serious, and it dawned on her that their married life was more difficult than it appeared on the surface.
“ALDEN’S VOICE CARRIES when he drinks,” Mattie said the next day. “Don’t worry. He won’t run off to Colombia. He couldn’t bear to be away from us that long.”
She looked enormous that morning, her b
elly swollen into a great mound. “I can’t even see my feet anymore,” she moaned.
“I can see them. They look pregnant.”
“They get that way every time I carry a child.” Mattie sighed. “Do you remember those Port Huron days? We swore we’d be old-maid teachers before we became housewives.”
“We almost managed it. I believe you held out longer than I.”
“Not on purpose. When Alden showed some interest, I nearly conked him on the head and hauled him off like a cavewoman.”
Mamah laughed. “I think Alden did all right for himself.” She thought of her own wedding. “It’s sad my mother never lived to see me get myself down the aisle—it was what she wanted most in the world. At the end, she rued the day she sent Lizzie and Jessie and me off to college, because none of us was married when she began failing.”
“She probably wanted things settled,” Mattie said. “She wanted to know you were all safe. I knew your mother. She was proud of you.”
“Oh, at first I think she was proud. She wanted us to have the chances she never had. But to tell you the truth? I think at the back of her mind, she believed that having cultivated daughters would mean better marriages for all of us. Instead, off we went to work. She was disappointed at the end, no question about it.” Mamah nodded thoughtfully. “She came to think that education had made us unsuited for marriage. And sometimes I think she was right.”
“You’ve grown a bit dark on the subject.”
“Well, in those days I thought the world was on the brink of change. But look at us. It’s 1909. I couldn’t have imagined back then that we wouldn’t have suffrage by now.”
