The Wright 3

by Blue Balliett

  These are crazy ideas, he thought, shaking his head. Crazy ideas that for some reason don’t feel crazy.

  As a kid, he’d loved magic tricks and could make small objects seem to appear and disappear. He could fool people. His great-grandfather had actually taught him a number of these tricks. The young man smiled at the memory of a disappearing card, a live turtle that could vanish, a spoon that bent….

  Deep inside, he wondered how his great-grandfather would feel about him working on this job. True, the house was a wreck, and true, the pieces were supposedly going to famous museums to be preserved forever. But he could guess what his great-grandfather and Mr. Wright would feel about the museum plan: Both would be outraged. Henry Dare knew enough about the house to know that Wright had very carefully planned and balanced and scaled so that no one part of the house could be seen without thinking of the others. Everything fit — almost like one of those three-dimensional brain-tickler cubes. To even talk about taking it apart would have been sacrilege.

  He sighed. If he didn’t speak up, would somebody else be hurt? But who would believe him?

  Petra read for a couple of hours that night, unable to stop. She was surprised: The Invisible Man was a page-turner. Written in 1897, thirteen years before the Robie House was completed, it had appeared a long time ago — before computers, before airplanes, before anyone in her family had come to the United States. She wondered if Frank Lloyd Wright had read the book.

  The story began as a stranger turned up at an English country inn in the middle of a February snowstorm.

  HE WAS WRAPPED UP FROM HEAD TO FOOT, AND THE BRIM OF HIS SOFT FELT HAT HID EVERY INCH OF HIS FACE BUT THE SHINY TIP OF HIS NOSE … HE STAGGERED INTO THE COACH AND HORSES, MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE AS IT SEEMED, AND FLUNG HIS PORTMANTEAU DOWN. “A FIRE,” HE CRIED … “A ROOM AND A FIRE!”

  Petra had no idea what a portmanteau was, but guessed it was a suitcase. She read on.

  The stranger’s arrival was the highlighted passage Petra had first found, the unheard-of piece of luck. Apparently the inn didn’t have many customers in the winter. The stranger ordered food and waited in the parlor, but wouldn’t take off his wet coat, hat, or goggles. He didn’t give his name. The innkeeper’s wife asked endless questions, but the stranger didn’t reply.

  After she’d brought his food and left, the wife realized she’d forgotten the mustard:

  SHE RAPPED AND ENTERED PROMPTLY. AS SHE DID SO HER VISITOR MOVED QUICKLY, SO THAT SHE GOT BUT A GLIMPSE OF A WHITE OBJECT DISAPPEARING BEHIND THE TABLE. IT WOULD SEEM HE WAS PICKING SOMETHING FROM THE FLOOR….

  “LEAVE THE HAT,” SAID HER VISITOR, IN A MUFFLED VOICE, AND TURNING SHE SAW HE HAD RAISED HIS HEAD AND WAS SITTING AND LOOKING AT HER.

  FOR A MOMENT SHE STOOD GAPING AT HIM, TOO SURPRISED TO SPEAK.

  HE HELD A WHITE CLOTH … OVER THE LOWER PART OF HIS FACE, SO THAT HIS MOUTH AND JAWS WERE COMPLETELY HIDDEN … ALL HIS FOREHEAD ABOVE HIS BLUE GLASSES WAS COVERED BY A WHITE BANDAGE … LEAVING NOT A SCRAP OF HIS FACE EXPOSED EXCEPTING ONLY HIS PINK, PEAKED NOSE…. THICK BLACK HAIR, ESCAPING AS IT COULD BELOW AND BETWEEN THE CROSS BANDAGES, PROJECTED IN CURIOUS TAILS AND HORNS …

  Petra was jumping ahead now, reading faster and faster. She stopped to open her bedroom door and then sat up with her back to the wall.

  The man was irritable and abrupt with everyone at the inn, who all assumed he’d had a terrible accident or an operation. That night, the wife “woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips that came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with vast black eyes.” Despite how ridiculous the image was, a shiver ran down Petra’s spine.

  When the stranger’s belongings arrived, he went outside, fully bundled, to see that the boxes got unloaded carefully from the cart. He was bitten on the leg by a dog, and rushed inside. Genuinely concerned, the innkeeper followed him, pushing open the door to the stranger’s room:

  THE BLIND WAS DOWN AND THE ROOM DIM. HE CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF A MOST SINGULAR THING, WHAT SEEMED A HANDLESS ARM WAVING TOWARDS HIM, AND A FACE OF THREE HUGE INDETERMINATE SPOTS ON WHITE, VERY LIKE THE FACE OF A PALE PANSY. THEN HE WAS STRUCK VIOLENTLY IN THE CHEST, HURLED BACK, AND THE DOOR SLAMMED IN HIS FACE AND LOCKED. IT WAS SO RAPID THAT IT GAVE HIM NO TIME TO OBSERVE. A WAVING OF INDECIPHERABLE SHAPES, A BLOW, AND A CONCUSSION. THERE HE STOOD ON THE DARK LITTLE LANDING, WONDERING WHAT IT MIGHT BE THAT HE HAD SEEN.

  Over the next few days, the stranger shut himself in his room, ordered that he not be disturbed, and set up what appeared to be a scientific laboratory. He went out at twilight to walk, and frightened everyone.

  HIS … GHASTLY BANDAGED FACE … CAME WITH A DISAGREEABLE SUDDENNESS OUT OF THE DARKNESS …

  Petra imagined what it might be like to turn the corner of Harper Avenue at night, outside Powell’s, and come face-to-face with a bandaged, angry man who had no visible skin but the tip of his nose. She decided she’d had enough reading for the moment, and closed the book. How could something written so long ago be so creepy?

  The Robie House was a bit creepy, too — and old. Could she have found these books for a reason? Did Frank Lloyd Wright and the Invisible Man somehow fit together?

  The noise and bustle of her family was a relief, and her mother smiled at her, surprised, when she asked if she could dry the dishes.

  By the time she’d played two games of Go Fish with her youngest sister and helped one of her brothers make a tent out of his bedsheets, the man on the train had lost his importance for the moment, the spooky twinkle in the Robie House windows had faded, and the Invisible Man had become just that.

  Petra, Calder, and Tommy didn’t see one another that weekend.

  On Monday, June 6, Petra stood outside her door before leaving for school. She took a deep breath. The sky was a cloudless, look-at-me blue, and the temperature was perfect.

  After the monochromatic cold of a Hyde Park winter, spring felt like an epiphany. Petra had just learned this word, and loved both the meaning and the sparkly, weightless sound — an epiphany was a moment in which there was a sudden flash of recognition, a yes. On a day like this, every detail felt deliberate and extraordinary: the velvety scent of damp wood and stone, the bright plink of purple and red and yellow blossoms, and the green underfoot and overhead, every vein and stem running like a river through the morning.

  Her eye wandered to a cluster of pansies in the yard next door. The thought of the pansy description in The Invisible Man made her walk over and look carefully — silly, the idea of a pansy being frightening. She noticed that many of them did have markings that were like two eyes and a mouth, markings surrounded by a flush of cheerful color. Each flower had five petals, with the markings on the lower three. Some looked like clover-shaped butterfly wings, or maybe abstract paintings done with a brush as thin as a hair. It occurred to her that the more you looked at less, the more less became more. Petra tucked this idea away for later.

  Strange how much you miss when you’re unhappy about something, she thought. Well, nothing like Tommy Segovia would get in the way of her spring: Writers couldn’t afford to miss a second.

  Petra saw Calder pop out his front door and look in her direction. He raised his hand in a wave, something Petra noticed he didn’t do with Tommy around, and walked quickly toward her.

  “I told Tommy I’d meet him in front of the new Medici Bakery before school,” Calder said.

  “Sure,” Petra mumbled, wondering if he meant for her to come, too. Despite her resolution of a moment before, she felt the morning crumple and fade.

  As she and Calder walked west on Fifty-seventh Street, he told her all about the words that came out of LIFEART, including earlift, flare it, and fear it, and she looked interested but distracted. She seemed excited about the filter-trifle idea in relation to the Robie House, but frowned anyway. He noticed that her hair, which was thick and curly, was pulled back in a businesslike ponytail. It was actually more of a round puff than a ponytail.

  Suddenly Petra said, “You know the
guy I saw on the train?”

  Calder reached into his pocket. “Yes?”

  “He didn’t have a face.”

  “What?” Clack-clack went the pentominoes as Calder began stirring them.

  “I couldn’t see it, and I’m pretty good at those fast-glimpse train things. I don’t remember blowing hair or a hood or anything — just the dark cape and the hand.”

  “Weird when you think about the book cover.”

  “Exactly.”

  They had turned left on Fifty-seventh Street and walked past blocks of buildings, Bixler playground, and were almost at the Medici.

  “Petra?” Calder looked at her. “Don’t tell Tommy about the book, okay? He and I used to sneak up on the tracks, and … well, he hates reading, anyway.”

  “No problem,” Petra said stiffly. “I read some last night.”

  She was about to tell Calder about the highlighted passage in the second copy of The Invisible Man and to ask him if he thought the books could have anything to do with saving the Robie House when Tommy stepped out of the bakery. He and Calder high-fived each other. Tommy immediately pulled off a piece of his chocolate croissant and offered it to Calder. Calder took a bite, and glanced at Petra as if to say, It’s good — have some!

  “Girls never eat this stuff,” Tommy said, nodding in her direction.

  Petra stared at him. Was he serious? Was he implying girls only thought about getting fat? Or that she was fat? She turned toward Calder. He had stopped chewing, his mouth frozen in a shocked twist.

  “Only girls like me,” Petra said angrily, then wished she hadn’t said it. You couldn’t pay her to touch that nasty kid’s croissant. She spun around and began walking toward school. Neither of the boys called after her to wait up.

  Tears prickled beneath Petra’s eyelids. What was wrong with Calder? Why hadn’t he said anything? She knew he was still her friend. Why couldn’t Tommy try to adjust? What gave him the right to turn the clock back, to try to erase her?

  As she walked, aware that her pants were too tight and too short, she concentrated on not looking upset. Luck, luck, luck, luck was the rubbing sound her pants made. Then she realized why, and suddenly felt a tiny bit better.

  “An unheard-of piece of luck,” she muttered to herself as she pulled open the door of the middle school. She held onto that idea as she slid into her seat in the classroom, determined to ignore both Calder and Tommy that day.

  As soon as Petra turned away, Calder said fiercely, “That was mean,” and a large piece of croissant shot out and stuck to Tommy’s arm. Tommy took aim and flicked the chewed piece of croissant back at Calder. It landed on his cheek, and Calder punched him. Both boys were half-laughing now, half-angry.

  “But listen, it’s because of the fish carving. I found it in the yard of the Robie House and I wanted to ask you if you thought I should tell the class. That is, if we’re talking about the house again.”

  Calder stopped dead and looked at Tommy. “Why didn’t you tell me that on Friday when you were at my house?”

  “Because you wanted her to be in on it.”

  “Why can’t she be?”

  Tommy mumbled, “She wouldn’t understand.”

  “How do you know? She would…. If you can’t do stuff with Petra, you can’t do stuff with me,” Calder said, surprising himself.

  Suddenly Tommy took off. He headed at a run away from school and back toward his apartment building. Calder stood for a moment, looking after him. Great, he thought. Now both Petra and Tommy were mad at him.

  Fine, forget it! If they couldn’t all three be friends, then maybe none of them should be friends.

  Calder crashed noisily into his seat in the classroom, catching one pocket on the back of his chair. All of his pentominoes fell to the floor. Petra didn’t even turn around.

  That morning Ms. Hussey was wearing a purple skirt with a yellow lining. She had new lavender flip-flops on, and her toenails were painted silver.

  She stood at the front of the room, her hands clasped together. “I couldn’t wait for you to get here!” she said, and her sixth-graders knew she meant it.

  “I have a plan,” Ms. Hussey began. “We’re going to visit the Robie House, as Calder suggested. We can’t get in, but we’ll just assume we’re welcome to observe — there are times when it’s important to act rather than ask. Your job is to figure out whether you think this building is a piece of art. If so, why? If not, why? We may be able to use your ideas to save the place.”

  The class buzzed, pleased to be going on an unexpected field trip.

  “Are we all here?” Ms. Hussey said, scanning the rows. “Where’s Tommy Segovia?”

  “I think he might be late,” Calder said.

  Ms. Hussey made a little mark in her attendance book. “We’ll leave him a note. So. The first thing I want each of you to do is get a clipboard, some paper, and a sharp pencil.”

  While the class rustled and rattled and sharpened, Ms. Hussey wrote Tommy a note on the board, asking him to wait in the middle school library until they returned.

  Suddenly Petra wasn’t mad at Calder anymore. Had he left Tommy in a bush with a bloody nose? She hoped so.

  “Let’s be very quiet on the way out. If anyone asks, we’re taking a spring nature walk.” Ms. Hussey turned and led the way quickly out of the building. Petra loved the way she never looked back.

  The sixth graders walked the three blocks to the Robie House without much talk, excited to be doing something that wasn’t really allowed. As they approached the building, Ms. Hussey stopped them.

  “Now. You’re going to be sketching and taking notes. The ‘Do Not Enter’ tape is around the building and not the entire property, so you can explore as long as you don’t cross that boundary. We’ll meet back here in half an hour.”

  Surrounding the building, the class peered in windows, walked through the garden, and stood on tiptoe by the curb to get a better view of the second and third floors. Soon they were seated singly or in small groups, drawing and writing.

  Petra saw Calder looking closely at the west side of the house. He was standing in front of a raised terrace, and soon he sat down with his back to a tree, his clipboard on his knees. When she walked by, she saw that he was drawing three-dimensional pentominoes on a sheet of graph paper. He still hadn’t said a word to her. But then, she hadn’t said a word to him, either. Maybe a break was a good thing.

  Petra circled the house twice. Aside from the quick visit on Friday afternoon, she had never looked carefully at the place. This morning the windows were shimmery, almost like the tail feathers on a peacock, and the building itself looked maze-like, with four levels of walls and three levels of roofs. She had passed it countless times before, but had never noticed how complex it was.

  What would it be like to live in a house like this? Bright and open, yes, but she thought she’d feel like a snail without its shell. Her house on Harper Avenue was tucked between the tracks and the street, and although it was noisy and crowded, it was cozy. The Robie House seemed more like a collection of shallow, open boxes stacked casually one on top of the other, some overlapping and some not. More like a place to play. The house was perfect for a game of hide-and-seek, a slightly creepy one.

  As Petra continued to explore, she realized that she couldn’t really see inside the house. The way the terraces and walls were set up, it was almost as if the windows were a tease, saying, Here we all are, but what can you see? There was something about the entire building that invited you in and at the same time pushed you away. Something that felt like a bit of a trick — or a trap. She wasn’t used to studying art that felt uncomfortable.

  She settled down to sketch outside the garage. The windows in front of her were smaller than some of the others, and the colored glass that made up the design was particularly lovely.

  As she drew, she had the odd sensation that tiny pieces of iridescent glass were changing color when she looked away. Hadn’t it been lavender-cream-ruby on the left par
t of the design? Not turquoise-sepia-ruby? She shivered, remembering her visit with Calder — the ripple of light and the strange breeze. And then something unexpected happened: One of the casement windows she was studying swung slowly open.

  The window closed, then drifted open twice more, and Petra guessed it must have been left unlatched. After all, Ms. Hussey had told them that the interior of the house was in terrible shape and that the house had stood empty for over a year. Then, as Petra continued to stare, something dark moved inside the room. She felt the back of her neck prickle.

  A shadow, she told herself, and then realized that to have a shadow you needed something solid. As she hopped to her feet, the window clapped shut with a bang, as if someone inside had given it an angry pull. Petra snatched her clipboard and hurried around the side of the house.

  Turning the corner, she practically fell over Calder, who was looking equally upset.

  “There you are!” He grabbed her arm. “Petra — I think I saw someone inside the house! A man with a dark cape.”

  After a hurried whisper session in the corner of the garden, Calder and Petra agreed not to tell anyone, at least not yet.

  Then they heard Ms. Hussey’s piercing whistle, the drop-everything-and-come signal, and at that moment a determined-looking man with a hard hat came out of the house.

  He shouted, “Hey! Stay on the sidewalk, kids! Whaddaya think the sign says?”

  Ms. Hussey was standing calmly on the curb. As the class gathered, the man strode up to her and told her in a growl that a mason had fallen off the roof three days ago and was still in the hospital.

  Ms. Hussey’s face changed. “Is he okay? What happened?” she asked in a worried voice.

  “He’s conscious now, but not saying much. Came to take a look at the chimney, went on-site before anyone else arrived, and must have slipped. The place is a carnival house. When we went inside to get him off the balcony, I was hurt myself.” The man held up a large, bandaged hand.