CHAPTER 43

“Let’s have a picnic before Taylor leaves,” Frank said one morning.

He had talked about fishing in the river since they’d been back from Japan. She smiled at the sight of him ahead of her now, conversing with his two young draftsmen, who hung on his every word.

When Frank found a spot he liked, they spread out the blankets and took off their shoes. She unloaded the cheese and sausages, passed out four plates.

Frank was peeling off his socks. “So what’s happened in the world of American architecture in my absence, gentlemen?” he asked. “Tell me there’s been a coup in the palace.”

Mamah half listened as names were mentioned, buildings described. The day was as perfect as any she’d passed in Wisconsin. Low clouds were racing over the hills, flickering sun on and off the green field grass like light in a moving picture. She lay down on her side and closed her eyes, following the hum of the conversation more than its substance. She noticed how reverently Taylor and Emil addressed him, how they laughed at his stories. She didn’t have to see him to know he was happy. This was what he’d imagined in Italy when he’d told her how he would school young architects. No classrooms, only his drawing board. And picnics. He had forgotten to add picnics.

In Japan, he had fallen into a dark reverie one evening over how some employees had betrayed him. In a fit of anger, he’d said he would never again use any draftsman who had worked for him before. It would be only Germans and Austrians from here on out, young people who could handle the apprentice system. Yet here was Taylor, his one exception, she supposed. And Emil Brodelle, a Milwaukee boy whose background she suspected was neither German nor Austrian.

But they were audience enough. Soon it was only Frank’s voice holding forth uninterrupted, talking of architecture in Europe and Japan and America. She became aware that when one of the others squeezed in a few words, Frank barely acknowledged him. Nor did he laugh at their jokes. He only half listened while he seemed to be formulating his next witticism.

Emil jumped in when Frank paused. “What do you think of Walter Griffin winning the contest to design Canberra? I heard he and Marion Mahony have already moved to Australia. It’s something, isn’t it? To design the capitol of an entire country?”

Mamah opened her eyes and caught Taylor’s glance. Frank knew Marion had married Walter Griffin. She looked in Frank’s direction, but he made no move to show he’d heard a word. He was buttering a piece of bread.

Emil squirmed in the silence. “They both worked with you at one time, didn’t they, sir?”

Frank chewed his bread thoughtfully. “Griffin was a student of mine briefly; he’s been sucking my eggs ever since. As for her, she was an illustrator more than architect.”

Mamah flinched. The complaint about Griffin was old hat. But it pained her to hear Frank deny Marion her due. She had an actual architecture degree from MIT. She had been with Frank in the Oak Park office almost from the beginning. In fact, it was Marion’s presentation drawing, with its luscious foliage and tree trunks, that had convinced Mamah and Edwin to hire Frank in the first place.

“Frank,” Mamah humored him, “now, Frank. You know she was your right hand. Marion is every inch an architect.”

Frank looked out over the river. He stood up and fetched his fishing pole. “Who’s getting the first one, boys?”

The men strung themselves along the riverbank and sank their hooks. After ten or fifteen minutes, there were cheers and congratulations. Frank had caught a fish.

         

BACK AT THE HOUSE, Mamah walked into the kitchen while Frank was at the counter, gutting the paddlefish he’d caught. When she approached and stood nearby, he stopped what he was doing. He waited, his sharp knife frozen in midair over the wet carcass until she instinctively moved a step back. Then he sank the blade again into the tumid flesh of the fish and finished the job.

Mamah felt confused. It had seemed in that moment that he was furious with her. She assumed he was angry because she had contradicted him in front of his draftsmen. It wasn’t the first time she had felt as if he couldn’t bear her nearness, though. Sometimes her foot would touch his under the table during dinner, and he would make a great show of moving his foot away, adjusting his position in relation to her, as if to say, Are you quite finished arranging yourself?

He seemed to feel space and objects with the sensitivity of a bat. She remembered many evenings when he’d sat down to dinner and promptly swept aside his silverware. It was a habit that struck Mamah as crude, almost contemptuous, since she had just set the table only moments before.

“Why do you do that?” she’d asked him once.

“Do what?”

“Push aside your silver that way, as if you’re angry.”

“I hate clutter.”

“Silverware is clutter?” she asked.

“Until I’m ready to use it, yes.”

That night, though, as they spooned together, the skin of his chest warm upon her back, she decided she had misread him. He had simply needed elbow room this afternoon. One more new wrinkle to adapt to, but not worth trying to change, she thought. I might as well try to alter his eye color or reshape his nose.