Free The Women by T. C. Boyle Page A

maintenance and a half-interest in Taliesin—he even threw in a bone. She’d always claimed she wanted to go back to Paris, his lawyer told hers—that was his understanding—and he wanted her to know he was amenable to that. So much so that if she would leave for Paris within six weeks of signing the settlement, he would give her an additional one thousand dollars on top and exclusive of everything else, just to help ease her transition.
     
    She thought about that—Paris—the rooms she’d taken over an antiquities dealer on the rue des Saints-Pères, the artists she’d counted among her closest intimates, the bistros, the cafés, the gay life she’d led after Emil had passed on, and she very nearly relented. Paris in winter. Paris for Christmas. The smell of roasting marrons hanging over the streets, the blue-gray light of the afternoon, real life, real food, bouillabaisse, foie gras, les fromages. But there was something going on here she didn’t like, something he was hiding from her. She knew him. She knew the way his mind worked.
     
    What she didn’t know about—not yet—was Olgivanna.
     
     

CHAPTER 3 : THE WAY THINGS BURN
     
    F rank took to Svetlana as if she were his own, and during the first month of the new year it seemed to Olgivanna as if he were going out of his way to spoil the child—endless trips to the zoo, concerts, ice-skating parties on Lake Michigan, frankfurters, popcorn balls, candied apples on a stick—but that was just part of his charm. He never did anything by half measures. He was an enthusiast for life, in love with her and her daughter too, genuine and unself-conscious, though when they were seen on the street together people naturally mistook Svetlana for his granddaughter and that seemed to throw him off his stride. He was no grandfather, he would protest (though he was—his son John had a daughter of three or four, that much Olgivanna knew), but if he was living an illusion, strutting at her side like a young lover and reveling in it, why deny him? Svetlana could have been his daughter—she should have been, an exquisite long-limbed beauty of seven with much more of her mother than Vlademar in her, and she loved the attention, loved the treats and the piggy-back rides and climbing up beside him on the piano bench to pound the keys and sing “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Sweeter Than Sugar” along with him, her voice piping and probing even as his own mellow tenor held fast to the melody.
     
    Olgivanna was aware that he was auditioning for the role— Daddy Frank, that was what her daughter called him, just let him step into the room and she’d jump up and spring for his arms, shouting out “Daddy Frank, Daddy Frank!”—and she gave him credit for it, for the headlong rush of his desire and commitment. He was a force of nature, that was what he was, an avalanche of need and emotion that swept all before it. And she was in love too, mad for him, for the pleasure he took in her and the pleasure he gave her in return (Vlademar was nothing compared to him, nothing, as appealing as a dishrag, a milksop, and for the rest of her life she would say that she didn’t know what love was—the physical act, the uniting of two bodies above and beyond the intertwining of their spirits—until she met Frank). And more than that, she was in search of something to hold on to—a cause, a modus vivendi, yes, but security and protection too—and he was there to provide a pair of broad shoulders 19 when she most needed them—her savings were dwindling, her husband wasn’t doing much to help and it was awkward living at someone else’s pleasure, a guest in that overcrowded apartment in Chicago with people she’d never really liked to begin with. So when he asked her to come to Taliesin again, with her daughter, and not just for a weekend, but to move in and be part of the life of the place, of his life—she never hesitated.
     
    This time the route was familiar to her. And if