Loving Frank by Nancy Horan Read Free Book Online Page B

divorced these days; it wasn’t unheard-of. Sitting in restaurants, walking along Lake Michigan, driving in the country, they had talked of ways it could work, how they could live in Chicago and she could have her children with her somehow. If Edwin agreed, if Catherine agreed…
    She had rehearsed the speech she would deliver to Edwin a dozen times. But now that the time was here, she couldn’t stop herself from shaking.
    Standing up and moving around made her feel more resolute. She dressed, then leaned on the edge of the desk, rubbing her arms. “In a way, I’m relieved,” she said after a time. Her fingers worked her dark hair into a knot. “We won’t have to carry on this charade anymore.”
    Frank lay with his eyes closed, massaging his temples. After a while, he stood up, his face solemn as he slowly pulled on his clothes. His back was still youthful, not muscled so much as broad for his small frame, and taut, like the back of a strong swimmer.
    “She wants a year to see if we can repair it. If it doesn’t work, she’ll give me a divorce.”
    Mamah stared at him.
    “I know. I know. It’s absurd.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said yes.”
    Mamah’s body started reflexively. “But we agreed when this came—”
    “I know what we agreed, Mame. You know how I feel about this. But Catherine…” He shrugged and shook his head. “Her heels are dug in. She’s fighting for her life. What choice do I have but to wait it out?”
    Mamah felt her head wagging, half confused, half angry. Frank put an arm around her back and pulled her face into his neck with the other hand. They stood like that for long minutes, a chasm of silence between them.
    In the interminable hours following that afternoon at the Fine Arts Building, she hung suspended in the house on East Avenue, waiting for a telephone call or a note or something. But no word came.
    She began to drive around, looking at building sites she knew were his, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. When she heard Frank had finally begun the big house he’d been planning in Hyde Park, she drove to it, parked her car, and waited. After four hours of watching for his yellow auto to appear, she gave up and returned to Oak Park.
    On two different nights, coming home from concerts at the opera house after midnight, Edwin and Mamah drove past Frank’s Forest Avenue house. Both times his studio was brightly lit.
He’s thrown himself into his work,
she told herself.
             
    AS WEEKS PASSED and no word came, Mamah grew more perplexed. She had demanded nothing of Frank when they had last spoken, and he had promised her nothing. In a begrudging way, she admired his sense of honor in abiding by his agreement with Catherine; he could walk away with some shred of integrity. But other times Mamah felt frantic from uncertainty.
How can he stay away,
she wondered,
when I can hardly stop myself from charging through his studio door? How does he
manage
to keep his promise?
    Sometimes her head was so fogged she couldn’t concentrate on anything. She would find her son, John, standing in front of her, patiently saying, “Mama…Mama…Mama,” tugging at her dress, trying to get her attention so he could tell her something. In those moments, when she woke up to the skinny green-eyed boy in front of her, she was seized with remorse, grabbing him into her arms.
    Still, she didn’t look back and regret what she and Frank had done together. It was the truest love she’d known with a man. But what was their relationship now? More and more in the quiet hours of the day, a fear asserted itself.
He has returned to Catherine.
             
    NEARLY A YEAR EARLIER, she had agreed to give a presentation on
The Taming of the Shrew
at the Nineteenth Century Woman’s Club. As December approached, she wondered what had possessed her to choose that play, of all things.
    That was when I was living dangerously,
she thought. She had been full of herself, full of indignation about