The Women

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  But he was wrong.

  Within the hour they were both of them cowering like criminals in the hilltop garden, crouching over wooden stools in the dirt and whispering stories to Svetlana and the baby as if nothing in the world were the matter, while the sheriff, armed with his warrants, poked through the living room, the Blue Loggia, the kitchen, the bedroom and the studio. Within a day Miriam would be back on the attack. And within two months’ time they would have to run yet again, packing up so hastily the beds had to be left unmade and the clothes strewn across the floor, breakfast abandoned on the dining room table to draw flies and the garden left to the crows, the gophers and the pulsating hordes of insects with their clacking mandibles and infinite mouths.

  Frank tried to make it seem like an adventure, just as he had when they’d gone to Puerto Rico, but it was no more an adventure than fleeing the hospital when she could barely lift her head from the pillow or enduring the ragged have-nots of Coamo with their splayed dirty feet and toothless smiles and their emaciated goats and pustular dogs and the fried bananas that tasted like cardboard soaked in grease when she wanted only to be home at Taliesin with the baby beside her and the smell of fresh bread rising from the oven. He steered the vast gleaming hulk of the Cadillac across the countryside, heading west, terrifying her at every turn because he was always going too fast, as if the whole purpose of driving wasn’t to get someplace in comfort and safety but to defy every law of the road, and he kept up a running monologue the whole time. For Svetlana—to keep her spirits up—but for her too. That was one thing about Frank—you never had to worry about a lull in the conversation.

  “You’re going to love it, Svet,” he kept saying, “our own little cottage in the woods. On a lake. Lake Minnetonka. Can you say Minnetonka? Come on. You can say it. And I’ll tell you, this isn’t just a little puddle like the pond at Taliesin, but a true and veritable lake, full of fish, pike perch and suchlike. You like pike perch, don’t you? And bears in the woods, wolves, and what else?—moose. You’ll see moose too. Probably hundreds of them. And you know what? They’ve got a miniature canoe there, just the right size for a little girl—what do you think of that?”

  Trees arched over the road, denser here, the woods alternately thickening and thinning as they drove west through Montfort, Mount Hope and Prairie du Chien and then north along the Mississippi to La Crosse and on into Minnesota, one hamlet after another falling away behind them and the farms losing themselves in palisades of timber. Svetlana played along—“Moose? How big are they? Bigger than an elephant?”—and if she was upset she didn’t show it. But how could she fail to be upset? How could anyone, let alone a child? Perhaps Frank had seen all this coming—the lawsuits,59 Miriam’s seizure of Taliesin, the foreclosure and pending eviction, the sheriffs and the lawyers—perhaps he’d kept his own counsel and planned ahead, finding them this refuge that lay somewhere up the road, but here was the vagabond life all over again, everything they’d need for a month—two months, three, who could say?—packed into the trunk of the car in an early-morning panic when every squeak of the hinges, every thump and rattle, was the furtive annunciation of the police come for them. And not just to serve writs or argue fine points of the law, but to arrest them both and take them to prison, lock them up behind bars like anarchists or bank robbers, and what then? More newspapers? More humiliation?

  She tried to put the best face on it she could, tried to control herself for Frank’s sake and the children’s, but all she could think of was her garden, the flowers, the horses and chickens and cows—was everything to be sold off at auction? Would the tomatoes rot on the vine and the hydrangeas go brown for lack of water? It didn’t improve her outlook when they stopped for dinner in La Crosse and Svetlana developed one of her moods, refusing to eat because she didn’t like steak and didn’t want pork and she hated fish and hamburger too, and no, she didn’t want wieners or even ice cream or anything—and then the baby had diarrhea and it was one diaper after another and would they run out before they got to where they were going? And Frank, all the while the gayest, most carefree man in the world, chanting, “Minnesota, Minnesota, where the fish ’re bigger ’n Dakota!”

  If she was abrupt with the Thayers, who’d arranged the rental for them, well, she was sorry, she never meant to be rude with anyone, not the woman who owned the place or the cook cum housemaid she’d left behind, but her nerves were strung tight and the first few days in the new house were a trial. There were the usual tribulations associated with moving in—getting the children settled, stocking the larder, dealing with a new servant, going through the charade of making a home out of some stranger’s house filled with a stranger’s things—and the whole affair was complicated by the imposture of their new identities. She couldn’t be Olga anymore and Svetlana couldn’t be Svetlana. They were the Richardsons60 all over again, Frank and his wife, Anna (a good ethnic name to account for her accent), their daughter Mary and the infant who wasn’t Iovanna or even Pussy any longer but simply the baby.

  What to say? She’d been in a state of perpetual dislocation since she was a girl of eleven when she was sent to live with her sister on the Black Sea in Russia, learning a new culture and a new language, and then having to abandon it all at nineteen when the revolution broke out. She’d barely had time to make a home in Tiflis with Vlademar and her infant daughter when they had to flee in advance of the White Army, Georgei courageously leading them and a small band of his followers through Constantinople to safety, and then she’d found a home at Fontainebleau until Georgei’s accident, and then at Taliesin, and was it too much to ask to have some peace, to sleep in the same bed two nights in a row? To be part of something? To live a normal life like anyone else?

  Perhaps so. But she was nothing if not adaptable and the house did have its charms, Tonka Bay struck with light from early morning till late in the afternoon, loons calling across the water, the weather holding through September in a long lazy spell of Indian summer, and when it did turn in the first week of October the frost came at night to fire the trees in a display of color as rich as she’d ever seen. And they were together, just the four of them, with no battery of workmen hammering away, no clients to mollify, the outside world forbidden to them and their inner world all the richer for it. She adjusted to the cuisine of the new cook (a Miss Viola Meyerhaus, thick-legged and spinsterish, of indeterminate age, with her blond hair worn in an inflexible braid looped atop her head, whose dishes were invariably heavy with gravy, Kartoffeln, kraut and sausage, though she did make a wonderful Himmel und Erde, a mixture of mashed potatoes, apple sauce, onions, diced bacon and roast pork even Svetlana seemed to like), and on the cook’s day off Olgivanna took the time to prepare soups and stews and bake confections till the house smelled the way a house ought to smell. Every day they went sailing on the lake, and in the evenings there were rambles in the countryside and then hours spent by the fire. Frank, ever restless, hit on the idea of writing his autobiography—if he was denied architecture, he could at least use his time fruitfully, couldn’t he?—and she loved to sit and listen as he dictated the book aloud to the stenographer he hired on the strictest confidence.

  All went well, aside from the occasional slipup—neither of them could seem to remember to call Svetlana “Mary” when there were people about, and the Cadillac, with its Victoria top and Wisconsin tags, had to have been fairly conspicuous, especially as the newspapers were running photographs of both Frank and her and trumpeting the not-inconsiderable reward for information leading to their arrest and prosecution—and if she were to look back on this period in the years to come, she would have seen it as being as close to a pure idyll as anything she’d ever experienced. Given the circumstances, that is. She was happy, genuinely happy, and again, just as she had at Taliesin that spring, she began, despite herself, to relax.

  She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of tea one morning, Frank at work in his makeshift study on the pages he would dictate that evening to Mrs. Devine, the stenographer,
the baby asleep, Svetlana playing some sort of game in the canoe (which was firmly tethered to the dock and under no circumstances to be untethered—or paddled—without an adult present) and Viola busy at the stove, when a man in his thirties with a high vegetal crown of yellowish hair came up the back steps and entered the house without knocking. Before she had a chance to protest or even open her mouth, he was holding out his hand to her, simultaneously apologizing for the intrusion and introducing himself. “I’m Mrs. Simpson’s son?”61 he said, making a question of it. “And I’m so sorry to bother you, but I happened to be out from Minneapolis for the day—I’m an attorney, I don’t know if my mother told you?—and I was just, uh, well, I mislaid my fishingpole and I had an appointment to go fishing this afternoon with one of my clients. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind? I’m sure it’s in the attic.”

  He had an eager look to him, as if he were a boy still—tall enough to graze the doorframe but without the excess flesh so many men put on as they drift into middle age, his face as bland as a fried egg and his eyes unwavering and clear—so that the request carried with it an automatic stamp of plausibility. He’d lived here, grown up in the house. His fishing apparatus was in the attic. What could be more reasonable?

  “Oh, I’m sorry, hello, Viola,” he said, addressing the cook before Olgivanna could muster a reply. “I didn’t see you there. Are you well?”

  “Yes, Jimmy. Very well, thank you. And your mother?”

  A glance for Olgivanna, just to see how far he could go. “She’s enjoying her vacation—thanks to you, Mrs. Richardson. She went up Duluth way to visit with my aunt, but you know Mama, Viola, she’s back with me and my wife now—and just loving looking after Buddy and Katrina.”

  Frank must have heard the male voice echoing round the kitchen because he came out of his study then, looking neutral—not alarmed, not yet—and said, “Well, well, who do we have here? Is it Mrs. Simpson’s son, is that what I hear?”

  The man gave a visible start before he recovered himself, his voice rising to a kind of yelp as he moved forward to take Frank’s hand, “Yes sir,” he said. “Jim Simpson, at your service.” And then he explained his errand. “You wouldn’t mind if I just dashed up the stairs—it won’t be a minute. Of course, I didn’t mean to . . . well, I guess I’ve already put you out—”

  Frank didn’t demur. He stood there a moment, looking up into the man’s face, trying hard to read him. “You do much fishing, Mr. Simpson? ” he asked finally.

  “Oh, yah—but not as much I’d like. You know how it is, busy, busy, busy all the time.”

  “And what are you after—pike perch?”

  “Yah, mostly.”

  “Panfish, I suppose?”

  “Yah.”

  “Any whitefish in the lake? That’s the fish I prefer”—and he turned to her then—“isn’t it, Anna? Best-eating fish around.”

  “Well, you know, Mr.—Richardson, right?—I’m not sure on that. Don’t know if I’ve ever—well, listen, I’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

  “Go on ahead,” Frank said, “go get your fishing rod. And I’ll say goodbye to you now, sir.” They shook hands again, as if sealing a bargain. “I’m right in the middle of something,” Frank added, by way of explanation. He winked. Grinned. “Work, you know. No rest for the weary.”

  “Or the wicked either. But if you don’t mind my asking, what is it you do?”

  “Philately.”

  “Stamps? ”

  Frank nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Well, that must be—interesting, I suppose. Is there a living in it?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  The man shot a glance round the room, showing his teeth in a quick smile. “Well, all right, then, as I say, I don’t want to keep you—”

  There was a murmured thank you and then the pounding of feet on the stairs, the slamming of a door, the squeak of hinges—one of those pull-down things, she imagined, with the ladder attached—and then the odd rattle and thump from above. Frank went back into his study without a word. She listened briefly for the baby, glanced out the window to see Svetlana sitting on the dock now, rocking the canoe with her feet, then she poured herself a cup of tea, sat down at the table with the book she’d been reading, and forgot all about Jimmy Simpson until the hinges squeaked again, the door slammed and the footsteps thundered on the stairs. Then he was in the kitchen, his face riding high across the room as if he were carrying it on a platter right on out the door with a holler of “Thank you, Mrs. Richardson” and “See you later, Viola.”

  The footsteps retreated across the porch and fell off into a well of silence. “Nice boy,” Olgivanna said, just to say something, but she didn’t feel the truth of it. Just the opposite, in fact. There was something, well, fishy62 about him. And if she wasn’t mistaken—she couldn’t be sure, he’d gone by so fast—he wasn’t carrying a fishing pole either.

  “Oh, yah,” Viola returned, “salt of the earth.”

  There was a chill in the air that evening—it was the third week of October now, the trees dropping their leaves, geese crying out overhead like lost souls in the ether—and she’d come back from a long walk round the bay to the rich astringent odor of Viola’s sauerbraten and a fire of oak and sweet-scented apple from a windfall tree Frank had cut and stacked earlier in the day. Outside, beyond the windows, the sky was tied up end to end with pink ribbons of cloud under a cold red sunset. Svetlana was busy over a drawing, the baby asleep, Frank in his study. Olgivanna helped Viola with the table, setting out the plates and cutlery, tucking a red-flecked leaf into the fold of each napkin and taking her time over an arrangement of dried flowers and pinecones she’d collected on her walk, a simple thing, but Frank would like it. He was a great one for bringing nature into the house—they’d already made an expedition in the Cadillac to a local farmer for their Halloween pumpkins and the cornstalks to frame them, and practically everything in the place that could serve as a vase sprouted a sprig of cattails or yarrow or Queen Anne’s lace.

  As they ate, they watched the lake transmuted from copper to silver to lead, and then the windows began to give back the light of the room and Frank went round the house, turning on the lamps one after the other. Afterward, Mrs. Devine came in to take Frank’s dictation while the cook washed and stacked the dishes and Olgivanna put the children to bed, the baby in the master bedroom and Svetlana on the glassed-in porch. Then she sat by the fire with her knitting—she was making matching caps and scarves for the children in a snowflake pattern she’d devised herself—and listened to Frank’s voice as it rose and dipped through its modulations. She loved listening to him, even when he backtracked to correct himself or when he lost his patience and began wisecracking or broke into song, because he was telling a story, his own story, the narrative of his boyhood when he was sent to his Uncle James’ farm each summer to labor from dawn to dusk. “ ‘Whosoever would sow must hoe,’ ” he dictated in his strong clear tones, then paused to glance over his spectacles. “Paragraph break. And continue: ‘And if he who hoes would reap—he must weed.’ ”

  It was ten o’clock, Mrs. Devine stifling a series of yawns, Frank as indefatigable as ever, the wind up in the trees and the clock on the mantel-piece announcing the hour in a sleepy repetitive drone, when there was a knock at the kitchen door. The first thing that came into Olgivanna’s head was Mrs. Simpson’s son—was he returning the fishing pole? Still looking for it? But then she glanced at Frank and went cold. He’d come up out of his chair so fast the pages of his notes looped away from him to spill at his feet and he stood poised there, every fiber of him straining toward the kitchen, where Viola, in carpet slippers and a gray cardigan buttoned up over the glossy floral print of her dress, rose heavily to answer the door.

  A man’s voice carried in out of the night—“Is Mr. Richardson at home?”—and Viola, innocent of everything, murmured, “Yes, I believe he is.”

  In the next instant half a dozen men in hats and overcoats sho
uldered their way into the room even as Frank took a step back as if he were uncertain on his feet, and Olgivanna saw the fear in his eyes, real fear, for the first time since she’d known him. The room filled. There were more men in the kitchen, on the porch. Their faces were tight and waxen as they blinked against the light and they brought a smell with them, a harsh odor of the night, the primeval mud on their shoes, cigar smoke. Mrs. Devine, the stenographer, let out a gasp so sharp and sudden it was as if someone had punctured a tire. And all Olgivanna could think was We’re the Richardsons, that’s all, just the Richardsons. We’re nobody. We’re harmless. They can’t touch us.

  “You’re all under arrest!” one of them shouted, the one in the middle, with the massive jaw and the brutal shining oversized boots and the eyes that chewed up and spat out everything in the room, and she saw that he was brandishing a badge. There was another one beside her, crowding her, breathing his beer or whiskey or whatever it was right in her face—and somehow she seemed to have gotten up out of her chair without being aware of it, the baby’s cap dangling by a thread from one hand, the other at the collar of her dress, the sudden assault scrambling her senses, strangers, hateful strangers right there in her house as if she were under the whip of the Cheka, as if she were in Russia still and all the rest had been a dream.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Frank snapped, trying to brave it out. “On what charges? And what do you mean bursting in here like this?”

  It was then that another man shoved his way into the room, a jowly tall looming presence in a tan overcoat that fanned out behind him like an Indian blanket. “Well, here they are,” he bellowed, “—at last. Now, where’s the kid?” And then, before anyone could stop him, he jerked open the bedroom door and burst in on Iovanna with a shout. “Yeah, here it is, in here, the baby!”

  That was when Frank made a move for him and the big one, the sheriff, took hold of him—“No violence now,” he said, “and you come quietly”—and Frank said, “Get that man out of there or I’ll—”