by Nancy Horan
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
John 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 open
ed 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.
CHAPTER 47
By May it was clear that there would be no Japanese cook. The chef who had so delighted them in Tokyo was not simply delayed but, according to a brief note he sent in English, not interested in coming to Wisconsin at all. Mamah would have to launch a new search, and the competition for household help was stiff with summer coming on. Within days of the letter from Tokyo, Frank announced that he had found a new prospect. John Vogelsang, the man who ran the restaurant at Midway Gardens, told Frank he had just the solution, a wonderful woman from Barbados named Gertrude.
“Makes all the regular things and brilliant desserts, apparently,” Frank said to Mamah one evening. “She’s got a husband who would come along. Vogelsang says he’s an educated fellow who pitches in, does a variety of things. We could use another chore man, don’t you think?”
“Why is Vogelsang willing to give them up?”
“With his connections, he can get good help in Chicago any day. It’s a little favor to us, I think. He said he thought these two would like being out in the country.”
Mamah wavered. It would be not only one person but two. As usual, there was the uncertainty about money. Frank had gotten a small advance for Midway Gardens. There would be money coming in for the Imperial Hotel, but when, no one knew.
“Why don’t you invite them to work for a weekend?” she said. “Let’s see how they do.”
WHEN GERTRUDE CARLTON arrived from Chicago, she carried a pillowcase full of food. She was young, with smooth brown skin and a gentle, confident manner. Dressed in a white waist and blue serge skirt, she carried a parasol above her Sunday hat.
Mamah showed her around the kitchen and the garden. The young woman stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the vegetable patch, approval flitting across her face. “Peppers,” she said.
