“Herbert, I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said, and she could hear the agitation in her own voice, “but I was wondering if you’ve seen Billy — or, I mean, if you could go and fetch him, please. I’ve got to — it’s urgent.”
The boy was wearing a loose black satin tie and long trailing smock, in imitation of Frank, though it promised to be another hot day. He’d been deep in his work and he gave her a look of utter bewilderment, as if he’d suddenly lost the capacity to speak, snatching a quick glance at his drawing before he flushed and got to his feet. “He was here earlier, with Brodelle, an hour ago maybe—”
“Where is Emil?”
A duck of the head. “He said he was going to go riding before lunch — and work late, of course, to make up for it—”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “If you’d tell Billy to bring the motorcar round — I need to go into the village and I won’t be gone an hour. It’s very urgent.” He was already at the door, a scramble of limbs and the scrape of his shoes, when she called out to him. “I won’t be taking the children.” She hesitated a moment, watching his face — he was still flustered but anxious to please, a good boy, malleable, likable. “Would you look in on them — if it’s not too much trouble?”
The sun was already baking the flagstones of the courtyard as Billy held the door for her and she climbed into the car, everything still and peaceful and not the hint of a breeze. Billy was in his work clothes, as clean and precise and neat as he always was, no matter the job or its demands or how grease-stained and mud-caked his fellow workers might have been. He tipped his hat to her as he slid behind the wheel—“Looks to be another scorcher,” he said and she answered that it certainly did — and that was the last thing she said until he pulled up in front of the Western Union office and she instructed him to wait there for her. She’d wanted to confide in him, but the thought of the scene in the kitchen was too humiliating, too overwhelming, to confide to anyone. She’d had a shock, that was it. And she wasn’t over it yet.
It took her two minutes to compose the telegram — COME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE STOP SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED — and then she paid the man, got in the car and had Billy drive her back to Taliesin, trying to stay calm, telling herself that this crisis would pass as they all invariably did and that Frank would be there to support her, as he’d always been and always would be.174
When Billy turned in off the main road, she watched the house emerge from its frame of trees, a house more precious and exquisite than anything in Tuscany or Umbria or anywhere else — the sky above and Frank’s creation below, every detail spun out of his head and for her, for her — and it made her glad and proud too. And it calmed her, just the sight of it, because there was no place she’d rather be. It was home. She was home. And as Billy shifted gears to climb the hill she felt a stab of nostalgia so powerful the tears came to her eyes, but she was quick to dab them with her handkerchief and avert her face so Billy wouldn’t notice. It was nerves, that was all.
She sent Herbert to tell the cook that she and the children would be taking lunch separately out on the screened-in porch and that the workmen would be served in the dining room, and Herbert bobbed back almost immediately to say that the cook was asking how many they’d be. She was seated at her desk, rereading a paragraph she’d already read twelve times over, feigning normalcy — everything was on an even keel, nothing amiss, and she wanted them all to believe that, even Carleton — and she looked up and counted them off on her fingers. “Well, let’s see,” she said, “Brodelle’s here somewhere, isn’t he?”
“He’s back at his desk, yes.”
“All right: Emil and you, and Brunker and Lindblom — that makes four. And Billy makes five.”
“And Billy’s kid.”
“Ernest.” She smiled. “He’s busy learning his father’s trade, is he? I hope he’ll keep up his studies when school starts up again in the fall — there’s no substitute for a good education, wouldn’t you agree?”
He shuffled and stammered a bit, but certainly he agreed — that was the whole point of his being here at Taliesin under the hand of Mr. Wright — and of course, he’d appreciated the gift of The Woman Movement, which he was finding very. . stimulating.
She thanked him. Told him he was very kind. And thanked him too for acting as go-between for her and the cook — she wasn’t feeling very well and her work had reached a critical stage. .
He nodded. He was standing at the door, looking only to escape.
“Oh, by the way,” she added, “I think we can expect Mr. Wright back this evening.” She picked up her pen, idly tracing over a notation in the margin of the page. “I just thought you and Emil might want to know.”
Then it was lunch. She’d steeled herself — the thought of seeing Carleton, let alone have him there serving at table, made her stomach turn, but she had to appear as if everything was normal. For everyone’s sake. There was no point in upsetting the children — or the workmen either. Or the Carletons, for that matter. She’d had enough upset for one day and she was determined to get through with the meal without exacerbating the situation.
She led John and Martha out onto the porch—“I want to eat with Ernest,” John kept whining. “Why can’t I eat with Ernest?”—seated them at the table and then took her own place. “Not today,” was all she said in response, and she didn’t mean to be curt but she saw no need to involve the children in this — she wanted them with her, she needed them there, and that was enough — and so she turned to Martha and said, “You know, Martha, that truly is a pretty dress. And so lightweight too, perfect for this weather. Aren’t you glad now that we picked it out together?”
And then Carleton was there with his face of iron and his inflexible posture and his gaze on the furniture, the floor, the tray he set down with the faintest mockery of his usual flourish, never daring to lift his eyes to hers or the children’s or to utter one single word. There was soup to start, a vegetable broth into which Gertrude had diced red peppers from the garden, along with paper-thin slices of pork she’d rubbed with sage and then marinated in vinegar and lime oil. It was delicious. But John, always a choosy eater, turned up his nose at it. “Mama,” he said, pinching his voice, “do I have to eat this?”175
Well, corn wasn’t cane and this place was no island you could walk across in a day from shore to shore but a glowering dark limitless prison he wanted no part of, not anymore, and he came up out of that cornfield where he could smell the hot reek of the earth that was nothing but spilled blood and shit and the bone meal of all the men and animals that had ever lived atop it and went into the house and washed his hands and slipped into his white service jacket as if he’d been born to it. Service. He’d show them service. The kind they never expected. Because they didn’t know a thing about him and they didn’t know how he’d squatted over his heels and smelled the raw earth while the cornstalks stabbed all around him like ten thousand spears and he learned and studied and talked to the sky and the voice in his head until he had no choice.