“Freedom? To do what?” Edwin’s eyes went to Frank. “To break up two households — and for him? For this architect? This sawed-off genius? ”
All Kitty could think was that she wanted to be out of this, out in the cold, on the familiar streets, and she thought of Llewellyn, just five years old and in want of her, in want of his father, and dinner, his playthings and his coloring books. What about Llewellyn? What about the house? And Frank’s mother, installed in the cottage out back? What of her? Was it all going to come crashing down?
Mamah stiffened. “There’s no need to be uncivil, Edwin.”
“Please,” Frank was saying, and he actually took Mamah’s hand in his own as if they were two children lining up for a school trip, “you have to understand how difficult this is for us, but there is no higher law than the freedom to love—”
“Ellen Key,”140 Edwin said acidly. He hadn’t moved save to clamp his hands together as if he were praying. Or crushing something.
“That’s right,” Mamah snapped. “Ellen Key. ‘Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.’ ” She delivered the line like an actress, as if it had been rehearsed, and it came to Kitty then that it had, the whole scene, the two of them — she and Frank — iterating their lines in some back parlor or bedroom against the hour of performance. “I never loved you, Edwin, you should know that, and I never pretended to. Not in the way of a true and deep and binding love”—and here she gave Frank a fawning treacly look—“not in the way of soul mates. Or destiny.”
There was nastiness on the air, a thrusting and parrying, cruelty suppurating out of an ordinary afternoon here in the teetotal suburb of Chicago known as Saints’ Rest for its profusion of churches, its conventionalism and placidity — its normalcy and decency — and Kitty wanted no part of it. She was too humiliated even to speak. Without thinking, she rose to her feet and they all three gave her a look of astonishment, as if they’d forgotten she was there, one more wife and mother sacrificed on the altar of free love.
“Kitty,” she heard Frank say. And Mamah, Mamah too: “Kitty.” That was the extent of it, that was all they could summon, two worn syllables, as if by naming her they could bring her back to what she was when she came up the walk fifteen minutes ago.
She didn’t answer. She went directly to the closet for her coat and shrugged away from Frank as he tried to help her on with it and in the next moment she was out in the stinging air, fighting her way round the maze of walls and turnings Frank had put up to protect the Cheneys from the life of the street out front. She heard him call after her, but she didn’t turn. And when she got to the motorcar — the chromatic advertisement of self and self-love, because that was the only kind of love Frank was capable of, and she knew that now, would always know it — she kept on going.
Weeks went by, months, and nothing changed. Except that she couldn’t see the Cheneys again — wouldn’t — despite the fact that they lived just blocks away and the social fabric of Oak Park was woven so tightly any loose thread would be sure to show. Had there been a rift? Her friends, perfectly respectable women she’d been acquainted with for years wanted to know, all of them sniffing round after the scent of scandal like vultures circling a corpse. No, she said, no, not at all — it was just that she was so busy with the children. Oh, she really had her hands full there, especially with Catherine a young lady now and Frances not far behind. Her smile was tired. And they knew, they all knew. Or guessed.
She kept up appearances as best she could, regularly attending the meetings of the Nineteenth Century Woman’s Club as she always had, though with a wary eye out for Mamah — and she still couldn’t believe it was she who’d befriended her and she who’d introduced her to her husband, the architect, thinking to do her part to drum up business. The irony of it, as grim as anything in a French novel. Did she hate Mamah, with her French and German and her college degrees and knowing air and the way she bossed everyone — or seduced them — and always got what she wanted, whether it was as trivial as the date of a card party or as momentous as choosing an architect to build her a house? Yes, yes, she did hate her, though she tried to put it out of her mind as much as possible. And she kept on washing and sewing and cooking and overseeing the servants and giving her every ounce of energy to the children, who seemed more needy than ever, as if they divined what was going on behind the scenes. She never could tell just how much they knew and so she couldn’t help quizzing them in a roundabout way — especially the little ones, Llewellyn and Frances — but she wasn’t very good at subterfuge. And Frances was smart, clever beyond her years — she was coming up on eleven in the fall — and Kitty had to be careful when she asked, as casually as she could, about John Cheney, if she’d seen him at school because it had been such a long while since the Cheneys were over, and how was he, a good boy, took after his father, didn’t he? But yes, of course, he was only seven, just a baby. Llewellyn’s age. Or no: a year and a half older. And why would such a big girl want to play with a baby — or even notice him?
It was all tentative, her life an unspooling string waiting for the blade to sever it, and each night when Frank came in from the studio he’d walled off from the house as if it were a bunker she felt a rush of relief and gratitude — and yes, love. True love. Not love of an object or love out of a book, but the deepest ache of wanting that had been there since she was sixteen years old and she’d collided with him at the costume party in his Uncle Jenkin’s church, everyone in character from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, she dressed as Cosette and he as Marius, and their two heads coming together so hard she wore the bruise for a week. You’re too young to marry, they told her, everyone did, but he came for her with all his irresistible force and though her parents held back and his mother rose up like a harpy with her wings spread in opposition, she was Catherine Lee Tobin with the flaming hair and rocketing eyes and nothing could stop her. She wasn’t yet eighteen when she was married. And now, two years short of forty, she was a castoff.
Spring that year—1909—brought a succession of cloudless days that stretched through late May and into the middle of June. Out in the countryside the farmers might have been scratching their heads, but in Oak Park, with its shade trees and enveloping lawns dotted with birdbaths and recliners, people welcomed the dry spell. The pace of things seemed to slow. Shopkeepers took the odd afternoon off, the children swam or played ball when school let out, flowers bloomed, cicadas sent up their soporific buzz from the dense nests of leaves. There were picnics, cookouts, horseshoe matches. Hammocks swung indolently in the backyards and the birds held their collective breath through the somnolence of the noon hour. One afternoon, when the boys were off somewhere and Catherine and Frances occupied with a play they were rehearsing, Kitty decided to get out of the house and take advantage of the weather — she needed a few things at the grocery and that was excuse enough. She made Llewellyn change his shirt and combed his hair for him, then put on a straw bonnet, gathered up her purse and parasol, and went down Forest, past all the grand houses Frank had designed and worked on there till it might have been his own private development, and out onto Lake, where the shops were.
The grocer wasn’t rude, but he did mention the bill outstanding in the amount of some nine hundred dollars,141 even as he toted up her purchases and she assured him Frank would be in that very night to pay on account, but the experience made her feel cheap, as if she were a shirker or a thief. She tried to put it out of her head, tried to enjoy the sunshine and the sustaining warmth of the day — it must have been eighty degrees, with the gentlest breeze off the lake, just perfect — and she looked at dresses, bought Llewellyn an ice cream and then started for home. She’d just turned the corner at Kenilworth, thinking to go home the back way if only to refresh the view, when the Cheneys’ maid came down the walk opposite, both children in tow.