Loving Frank

  Mamah let herself through the gate and walked on the path to the rear of the house. She rapped on the glass doors, but Lizzie didn’t answer. She could see for herself that Lizzie wasn’t in the apartment. Inside, nothing looked different. Mamah went back around to the side of the house, summoned her courage, and knocked on the screen door. In a minute a pretty blond woman appeared.

  Elinor Millor, the new Mrs. Cheney, nearly fell backward. “Mamah?”

  “Yes, I’m Mamah.”

  “Come in.” She held the door open.

  “You must be Elinor.”

  “I am.” The woman fingered the little pleats at her collar, her face dumbstruck.

  “I don’t mean to bother you. I was only here to see Lizzie, and the children, if they are around. I know I should have called you.”

  “Lizzie was here just a half hour ago. She lives downstairs.”

  “I know.”

  “Oh, of course you know. What am I thinking?” The woman pushed fine strands of hair from her forehead. “The children are not here. Martha is with her father. They’ve gone to the lake. John had a baseball game. He’s over at the school field.”

  “I see.”

  “Let me go look for Lizzie. Please sit down.”

  Mamah glanced around. The living room was spotless and nearly exactly as it had been when she’d left. There were a few new touches. An unfamiliar lace tablecloth on the dining table. White eyelet curtains on the library windows.

  “She must have gone off to the grocery store. She said earlier that was what she was going to do. You can wait. It’s no trouble at all. In fact, I just made lemonade.”

  “Thank you.”

  When Elinor returned, she sat across from Mamah in front of the fireplace. She busied herself with the glasses and napkins, taking a long draft from her drink before settling on something to say. “The garden you planted is very lovely.”

  “Elinor,” Mamah began, “it’s kind of you to invite me in. Lizzie and Edwin have spoken so lovingly of you. I want you to know that I appreciate how good you have been to my children.”

  Elinor shook her head. “Oh, no, please. It’s so easy. I love them.” She seemed about to say something more, her mouth half open, but she produced no sound. An awkwardness hung in the air.

  “I brought something for John and Martha,” Mamah said. “Just the gumdrops they like. May I put these on their beds?”

  If Elinor saw through her feeble ruse to go into the children’s rooms, she didn’t reveal it. “Absolutely. Go right ahead.”

  Mamah walked down the hall to John’s room first. She stepped inside and let her eyes adjust to the afternoon dimness. The space had changed. This was an eleven-year-old boy’s room now, with baseball pennants on the wall and a paperboy’s bag hanging by its strap over his desk chair. There was no evidence of the colorful train set that had once enchanted him, or any sign of the dozens of gifts she had sent him from Germany and Italy. As she looked around, a warm breeze lifted the curtains to reveal a row of fossil-encrusted sandstone chunks placed along the windowsill. Her throat ached with gladness. The few fossils they had gathered together when he was six had expanded into a collection.

  “El!” Mamah heard Lizzie’s voice at that moment, calling from somewhere outside. “Can you please open the screen? My arms are full.”

  “Coming,” Elinor called back.

  Mamah felt like an intruder, yet she hurried to Martha’s door. She dropped the box of candy on the frilly bedcover. Her daughter’s room was wallpapered now in a sunny flower print. Dolls were everywhere.

  Mamah slipped out of the room and walked down the hall into the kitchen, where Lizzie was unloading food from two large bags of groceries. The corners of her mouth fell when she saw her sister.

  “Let me help you,” Mamah said.

  THEY WENT OUT the front sidewalk and up East Avenue. “I’ve been desperate to see you, Liz. We haven’t talked in so long.” Her sister remained taciturn. “I’ve missed you so.”

  Lizzie walked along slowly, not returning Mamah’s glance. She looked older. What softness there had been in her strong, chiseled face had been filed away by the past few years. She was all angle and bone.

  “The truth is, I came to apologize to you for all the trouble I’ve put you through. I’ve told you before, but I cannot say it enough. I bless you every day for stepping in and taking care of the children. I never could have stayed in Berlin without your help.”

  “It was for John and Martha, whatever I did.”

  Mamah inhaled. Lizzie’s square jaw, so like her own, was set hard.

  “Do you think I don’t know how they suffered?”

  “I don’t know what you know anymore, Mamah.”

  “I know that you suffered, too, Liz. You’ve always been so private and dignified. I can only imagine the harassment you have endured. It was unremitting for us. We had reporters looking in the windows up at Taliesin—”

  “Oh, did you?” The sarcasm in Lizzie’s voice was lacerating.

  “I never meant to bring all of it upon you. Surely you understand that. I have loved you and admired you all my life. You are the only true hero I have. I owe you everything.”

  Lizzie reached out and stripped leaves off a twig. “You always wanted to do something big. Something important.”

  “Is that such a terrible thing? You’re the one who told me once that the world can’t forgive ambition in a woman.”

  “I never got to find out. My ambitions never seemed to figure into things. You were away at the university when Mother got sick, so it fell to Jessie and me. And you were already married by the time Jessie passed. Your life was set. Suddenly, there was a niece to raise, and then…” Lizzie paused. “Then you had your personality to go discover.” She tossed away a fistful of leaves. “You had everything. You had a wonderful man who adored you, beautiful healthy children. Freedom. No money worries. A nanny and a housekeeper. You didn’t have to work, and Edwin never asked a thing of you. Do you realize what you gave up for Frank Wright? The kind of life most women—most feminists—dream of.”

  They walked on in silence. Mamah was desperate to shift the direction of their words. “How is Jessie doing with her father’s people?” she said finally.

  “Jessie is…trying to adapt. I thought it better that she be with them, for the present, anyway. She’s not Edwin’s blood. I work all day. And now, without Louise…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lizzie looked at her, puzzled. “Louise is no longer with us. I thought you knew that. Elinor didn’t think she was needed. She let her go.”

  Mamah caught her breath. Oh, Louise, you must be dead from sorrow someplace. How could the woman turn Louise out? She had been the sun and the moon to John since he was a baby. To Martha too. “Where did she go?”

  “She went to live with her brother. She’s looking for another family. I’m hoping she finds something, but Louise is fifty-one now. She may have to live at the mercy of her brother.” Lizzie wiped her forehead with a square of handkerchief. “I’ll move out eventually, too. They haven’t asked me to, but Elinor deserves her privacy.” They had circled the block and stood now at the side gate. Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. “What is it you want from me?”

  Mamah reached out and took her sister’s hand. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Lizzie, but don’t cut me off, I beg of you. Please forgive me for not considering your feelings more.” Lizzie’s hand felt limp, noncommittal.

  Elinor appeared, smiling. “Well,” she said, “isn’t it a fine day? I had hardly noticed.”

  When Mamah turned to leave, she saw John come loping across lawns toward the house, his head down, his lips moving as if he were singing to himself. He seemed even taller now than he had when she’d seen him in April, when she was just home from Japan. As his head came up, his dark eyes grew saucerlike when he spotted her in the yard. He stopped in his tracks.

  “Johnny!” Mamah walked over to him and pulled his stiff body to her in an awkward hug
. “I almost missed seeing you. Will you go out with me for ice cream?”

  The boy looked confused. It pained her to see him glance first at Lizzie, then at Elinor. Mamah turned to see them nodding.

  “Okay.” He tossed his glove to Lizzie.

  “Shall we walk to Peterson’s?”

  “No,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. “That’s too far.”

  Too embarrassing, Mamah thought. It was probably where his friends gathered.

  “There’s a grocery store that has ice cream,” he said. “It’s just two blocks. You know that one?”

  “I do. Let’s go there.”

  They walked south. John caught Mamah glancing up at the Belknaps’. He said, “Ellis doesn’t live there anymore. His family moved to Wisconsin.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “They invited me to Waukesha to visit for a week this summer. Papa said I could take the train from there to Spring Green when I come see you.” His eyes lit up. “By myself.”

  The image of John alone on the train disturbed her. She swallowed hard and struggled to put brightness in her voice. “That sounds so grown-up.”

  Once more she glanced at the hulking Victorian, now empty of her nemesis. Over the past four years, whenever she’d thought of Oak Park, she could hear Lulu Belknap next door on a Sunday evening, leading her girls at the piano as they sang “Jesus, Savior, pilot me.” How strange to know the Belknaps were gone. And Louise, too.

  “I understand you’ve become quite a rock collector,” Mamah said, touching her son’s arm lightly as they walked.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, his head down. Subtly, he put another foot of sidewalk between them as they moved along. “Aunt Lizzie takes us.”

  MAMAH’S HEAD THROBBED all the way back to Chicago. The ache had started when she said had goodbye to John and watched him go into the house. A shapeless anger had come over her in that moment. By the time she got on the El and found a place to sit, she wanted to hammer the seat with her fist until the leather split.

  She propped her elbow on the open window and pressed her knuckles against her mouth. Below, on a wet lawn, children in bathing suits sprayed each other with a hose.

  So many things she hadn’t wanted to think about. But there were pictures in her mind now that wouldn’t go away.

  Elinor Millor had slipped into Mamah’s old life as if it were a comfortable dress. She looked like she had been there forever, standing on the stoop, smiling and chatting with Lizzie, tousling John’s hair as he raced into the house, the sound of a banging screen door echoing behind him.

  You always wanted to do something big. Lizzie’s words burned between her ears. It was true. She had always wanted to make a mark, to inhabit a bigger world than Boone or Port Huron or Oak Park.

  But what had she done with all that ambition? Attached herself to two colossal personalities. Spent herself on Frank Lloyd Wright and Ellen Key, who would have done great work without ever having known her. Poured her soul into defending the sanctity of the individual while John and Martha slid from her grasp.

  “WILL YOU TALK TO ME?” Frank was standing next to the chair where she had dozed off.

  Mamah started at his voice. She had been dreaming, her brain replaying almost precisely the events of the afternoon she’d spent in Oak Park. Except that in the dream, Catherine Wright passed her on the street, walked behind her like a ghost, rode on the train just across from her.

  Mamah stared around the room, then knew she was in Chicago, in the coach house. “When did you come in?”

  “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. O
r 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.