“Look,” she said, bending to Llewellyn, whose hand was sticky in hers, “there’s John and Martha. Should we say hello?” She gave a wave and the maid dutifully crossed the street to her, John skipping on ahead, while Martha — she was three, or just about — clung to the woman’s hand. She let go of Llewellyn and the two boys immediately converged and darted behind a tree, playing at some spontaneously invented game, and here was the maid. And Martha. “Good afternoon,” Kitty said.
“Afternoon, ma’am.” The maid was an Irish girl, slight and stooped, with black hair that blanched her face and two unblinking eyes. It had been a long while and Kitty couldn’t seem to recall her name.
“My, how they’ve grown,” she heard herself say, the conventional housewife, dealer in platitudes, and what else was there?
“Yes, ma’am,” the maid said. “The two of them. And it’s a blessing, isn’t it.”
She was about to observe that it was indeed, just a blessing, when she made the mistake of going down on one knee to look into little Martha’s face and coo over how she was all grown up now, wasn’t she? It was a mistake because when she got a good look at the child, at her coloring, the shape of her nose — and her ears, especially her ears — she saw Frank there and it gave her a jolt. But it couldn’t be. There was too much of Edwin in the girl, wasn’t there? Those were his eyes exactly. Or were they Mamah’s? The way she held herself — even suspended from the maid’s hand like an appurtenance — was like Mamah, the small-featured prettiness, the feasting eyes. But not Frank. Not Frank. They couldn’t have been — could they? But then he’d built the Cheneys’ house in 1904, there all day, every day, with his carpenters and workmen and his plans, and Martha wasn’t born till two years later, as if that were evidence enough. She remembered Mamah pregnant, the gestating swell of her, and how she complained all the time as if she were a martyr, the first woman on earth to experience morning sickness and gas. She didn’t care about children, that was what it was — not in the way Kitty did. She cared about ideas, her books, her precious freedoms.
“Yes,” Martha said in her child’s squeak, “all grown up. And I want a teddy bear. Lucy’s going to get me a teddy bear. Did you know that?”
“That’s very nice,” she said absently. “I’m sure it’s—” and then, overcome, she called out to Llewellyn in a kind of bleat, excused herself to the maid and went on up the street, silently adding up the months and the years and hating Mamah Cheney with all her heart.
At first glance, Frank seemed his old self that night. He joked with the children at dinner and afterward he sat at the piano a long while, reprising his stock of Gilbert and Sullivan songs, and the girls and Llewellyn sang along and she did too, though her spirit wasn’t in it. And Frank’s wasn’t either. He was pretending — it was all a pretense, she could see that, see right through him — slipping into the role of father the way he would have slipped into a client’s handshake or the latest suit he’d ordered from the tailor so he could shine and shine and let all the world marvel till the commissions piled up like drift and his name went round the world.
He was on his way back to the studio — he worked at night now, every night, later and later — when she caught up with him in the passageway, thinking to say something about the grocer, though she didn’t want to nag and the financial matters were solely his concern, his and his alone, but couldn’t he cut back on expenses just till they’d paid down some of the bills? That was what she meant to say, because it was on her mind and the look the grocer had given her made her feel common and she was upset in some way she couldn’t name, but instead she blurted, “I saw the Cheney children today, little Martha and John, and I couldn’t help thinking. . of you.”
She saw the look in his eyes — he wanted no part of it, no confrontations, no arguments, and he had work to do, couldn’t she understand that? Work. Work to sustain this whole tottering circus. He said, “Me? Why on earth—? ”
“She looks just like you.”
And suddenly he was furious, exasperated, rocking up off the balls of his feet and glaring till the flesh knotted between his eyes. “Who?” he spat. “Martha? Is that what you mean?”
She couldn’t abide that moment, couldn’t live through it and keep her sanity — because if it was true, and she was testing him, pressing him, forcing him out into the open — she’d kill herself. Shriek till the shingles fell off the house and run howling down the street to throw herself into the lake and stay there, deep down, till there was no trace of her left.
“You’re a foolish woman, Kitty. No — you’re delusional. That’s what you are: delusional.”
“Why? Because I expect my husband to love me or at least live up to his vows? Is that delusional? Is it?”
But he didn’t answer her. He just turned his back on her and strode down the passage and into his studio that was all lit up like the break of day.
Nothing changed as the summer wore on and then school started up again and the weather turned abruptly damp. To keep herself occupied she started a kindergarten at the house, a development which only seemed to alienate Frank further, as if the exuberance — and sweetness, sweetness too — of a dozen young children for a few hours a day would annihilate his creativity and drive him penniless into the street. It was early October, the leaves beginning to turn, a smell of smoke on the air, when she heard the news that Mamah had taken John and Martha away with her and gone off to Colorado to nurse a friend who was gravely ill — or at least ill enough to be in need of nursing. They’d gone sometime over the summer, apparently, and hadn’t come back for the start of school. Kitty didn’t know the friend, didn’t wish her ill or good or anything else, but she felt nothing but relief. Mamah was gone. The threat was past. And Edwin — she must have broken with Edwin, that was the only explanation, the story of the sick friend nothing more than a ruse. Or maybe not. Maybe it was legitimate. But in any case — and the thought lifted her like a sweet fresh breeze blowing all the way across the sodden plains from the painted peaks of the Rockies — Mamah was no more. Let Colorado keep her. Let her preach free love to the ranch hands and lasso all the husbands in the state right out of their saddles. Let her be a cowgirl. Let her wither.
Still, something wasn’t quite right. She’d had it out with Frank — he said he’d never let go of Mamah, that he wanted a divorce, that their marriage was a sham and worse, a form of slavery — but she hadn’t given in to him and he was still living under her roof and going about his business, even if his smile had died and he looked ten years older. He was grieving, that was what it was. So much the worse for him. He would get over it. And she would take him back to her heart and her bed, magnanimous and loving, a true wife, so that in time he would be transfigured into a semblance of his old self and everything would go on as before.
Was she delusional? He announced at dinner one evening that he was going into Chicago on business in the morning — he’d stay over a few days — and she didn’t think a thing of it, beyond the fact that he was taking a suitcase with him and a raft of his prints to sell (could it be that he was actually going to pay off the grocery bill?) or that Union Station was an infestation of tracks that could have taken him anywhere — west, even, to Colorado. It was nothing. He put in more miles than a traveling man. He was in Chicago half the time as it was — and he ran off to South Bend, Buffalo, Rochester, Madison, Mason City, anyplace his clients could be found. He’d even drawn up plans for a house in California.142