The Pull of the Earth
A novel
Coming Soon
We depend too much on outward forms and are too careless of the spirit beneath them.
— Frank Lloyd Wright
Chapter 1
I walked in the dark, key outstretched, toward the carved wooden doors of our building. The repurposed Gothic church looked out of place among the gleaming contemporary buildings that had risen around it on the edge of Chicago’s Old Town. It seemed alone and separate, and I understood that.
With one hand, I unlocked the doors and with the other, adjusted the constantly slipping back brace. Four more weeks of it.
I arrived at the studio before dawn now, bleary from lack of sleep, knowing I would accomplish little. Since my mother’s death, wrestling my attention to even one of the many matters at hand was nearly impossible.
Inside, I breathed the metallic odors of lead and solder from our work of stained glass restoration. Sometimes I could still find the scent of candles and incense beneath. Could imagine that the decades of prayer they represented had taken up permanent residence here. I wondered if anyone had prayed to go back in time and change something that happened. Anyone besides me.
I flicked the first light switch. A spotlight appeared on the water baths at the back, where we disassembled deteriorated stained glass windows. Then came to light the desks for painting glass, the kiln for firing it. Three more switches lit the long rows of benches in the center for the re-assembly of window panels.
Down a side aisle, I turned on the two displays that served as visual aids for explaining our studio’s specialty. We restored windows by the two most prolific designers ever of stained glass in America—Louis Comfort Tiffany and Frank Lloyd Wright. We had a replica for each, and I liked one, while Brigitte, as I called my mother from the age of twelve, loved the other.
The Tiffany replica window was a reduced size version of his Madonna of the Flowers, an indisputable masterpiece. As a girl, I’d sat in front of it soaking up the imagery of the mother holding the child, all draped in pink and lavender blossoms and bordered in green vines, blue sky. Had imagined the glowing mother and child were my mother and me, frozen like that, with her holding me all the time, forever, contentedly, in springtime. Because being the center of Brigitte’s attention, receiving the radiant gaze of the Madonna, was something that didn’t happen to me in real life.
I loved American Opalescent windows for their rich, pearly, swirly, gradated colors, created via the mixing of pigment into molten glass. It could capture the life and beauty of a flower, a leaf, a sunrise. Could seem possibly more beautiful than the real thing.
The Frank Lloyd Wright panel was smaller, a single replicated panel only, from his Tree of Life window. One panel was enough, though, since all the panels were the same and highly geometric. In fact, all his windows looked the same, I thought, and I told her so regularly. As recently as last month, I’d said so, adding, “And the Tree of Life window doesn’t have just one tree. If anything, it should be the Forest of Life.”
Wright had also come up on the terrible day, because she had a trip planned to his place in Wisconsin. She’d been making the three hour journey regularly, volunteering for anything and everything. She said they needed help and had wanted me to go, too.
I was irritable on the cold, windy, March scaffold, with [crusty snow sidewalk thirty feet below on one side and a gaping hole where the window was meant to go on the other. We had super scaffold around the outside so not even high wind could cause us to fall to the ground below.
I said, “What’s the deal with Frank Lloyd Wright, anyway? And what do you get out of it?”
She’d looked away, maybe in the direction of that place, Taliesin, and spoken softly. Dreamily, almost. “He brings everything and everyone together, and that feels so good.”
Her words had sounded weird, corny, ridiculous to me at the time, in my irritable state. But now, when I felt more alone than I ever had before in my life, I wondered what she meant. If I could ever feel the goodness of such a togetherness.
Far off, I heard the doors open again. Someone else was arriving early. I walked into the office, set down my bag, and removed my coat.
A moment later, fresh air wafted in and then André, in his bright scarf and trench coat, filled the doorway with his big body that intimidated some but to me was reassuring. We were the same age, thirty-four, and had largely apprenticed alongside each other.
“Good morning.” He gave me the careful smile I got from everyone now. He sometimes seemed like the sibling I never had, though we could hardly look less alike. He had made me feel seen when my mother didn’t. That used to feel good. Now that I dreaded what he might think of me, I avoided his eyes.
“Hey.” I didn’t mean for it to come out like a sigh, but it did.
He could also make me feel competitive. I wished I had been the one to land the project that was on the benches now, which kept the artisans working, but was grateful he had done it. And even more so, that he was dealing with the one thing I absolutely could not—handling the OSHA investigation of the accident. The health and safety organization would determine whether any safety requirements had been violated. Without a doubt, at least one had.
As if on cue, he said, “I heard from Tim Tollofson.”
I straightened too quickly and had to clutch my back. Tollofson was the contact for the OSHA investigation for the accident that was six weeks past now.
For the first ten days, I’d also had a neck brace. Now that was gone, and I was only to wear the other for extended standing. Otherwise, I was meant to be strengthening my back, and the best way to do that was by walking.
“You’re out of alignment,” my doctor had said, “but your body can heal this itself, in time. Your prescription is ‘Walk’.” The way she held my eyes when she said that made me believe she was prescribing it for more than just my back.
Andre put a hand on my arm now. He spoke gently. “The investigation’s done. No surprises. The only fine is for her lack of harness.”
At the word, harness, I flinched.
“Hey.” He shook my arm and gave a little smile. He wanted to see my relief. “It’s over, Gigi.”
I tried but felt my face go into that new smile, with my lips curling down at the corners. It felt like my eyes were doing that, too.
“The violation is for her,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Easy for him to say. I looked down at a dark stain on the floor and lied. “I know.”
I could feel his eyes trying to pull mine up as he repeated, “It’s over.”
I let out a breath. Tried to feel some release that the safety investigation was over. That was huge. The problem was, Brigitte was still dead. And I was living with the horror of that. The knowledge that if I’d stood up to her, the way I would have with anyone else, she might still be alive.
Sensing I was no longer present, Andre had the grace to walk out the door. In the hallway, he paused and took something from my Inbox.
He held it out. “A letter for you.”
The white envelope had a logo on the flap. A red square with the word Taliesin through it, and an address below in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The place she’d been going, the one that brought everything and everyone together and felt so good. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation or Architecture School or House Museum…I was never sure exactly what the place was. But this time, the letter was addressed to me, Gigi LaRouge Avila.
It was written in a hand so simple and sophisticated it could have been a font and began like other sympathy notes I’d received. Condolences, and then praise for Brigitte. It went on to tout her knowledge and skill, the fact that she really cared about clients’ projects. She’d been one of their most valuable ambassadors, it said, via her advocacy for, and work on, Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass windows.
As you may know, it said, your mother conceived a much-needed fundraiser centered around restoring Mr. Wright’s famous Tree of Life window, culminating in a demonstration/fundraiser here at Taliesin. Invitations for these events went out to our top donors six weeks ago.
That would have been just before she died. The letter finished up by saying, If there’s anything you can do to honor this commitment, you’ll have our endless appreciation. It was signed, Vera Jones, Archives and Exhibits.
The Tree of Life window. Brigitte had talked about it, loved the concept. The Tree of life is the past—and the future, if we’re going to have one, she’d said. I’d replied that I was glad it was a volunteer project, “because that’s exactly the kind of thing that keeps us struggling to make payroll. We can’t afford to do extensive restoration projects.” I think she looked sad when she said, “If we don’t make restoration a priority, it will cost everything.”
I turned my attention back to the letter. Could see that Vera Jones had put a lot into this effort. Had hoped her lovely words on this beautiful stationery, her sincere plea, would move me. And it did. But there was no way I could leave the studio when it was all hands on deck here. And no way I could leave when the studio was all I had left. I opened a drawer and put the letter inside.
The office space I’d shared with my mother suddenly felt claustrophobic and too empty at the same time. Looking for something of hers, my eyes fell on the paperweight, and I picked it up. I’d always found the heft of the brick of slab glass, or dalle de verre, satisfying as it filled my hand and weighed it down. We didn’t work with this type of glass, which had been something of a modern fad in our industry. But the thickness enriched the clear color. I raised it toward the overhead fixture, and it turned the green of a new leaf. Light swirled along the faceted edges, where artistic chipping had left striated whorls. Refraction, and I didn’t know what else, made every slight shift of the glass brick a different dance of color and light. Like sun coming through the leaves of a forest. That was something I hadn’t seen in a long time. I brought the brick to rest on my chest and the heaviness, for a moment, made a counterweight to the horror.
I let out a long breath and went to put the paperweight back. Something lay beneath it. A little scrap of craft paper she’d saved from some other use and on it, penciled words in her small, clear script. Eastern Cottonwood, Bur Oak, Bald Cypress.
A list of trees? They sounded like suite themes for an ecohotel. But if this was for business, like a request for coordinating windows, it would be in a file. And not on sketchbook paper.
So it was personal. Something whose meaning I would probably never know, like so much else about her. I carried the scrap of paper over to my bag, absentmindedly flipping it as I went. That’s when I saw a single line on the back. This name was penciled and starred. It said, Black Tupelo.
