Loving Frank

by Nancy Horan

“Ed is a good, decent man,” she said. “We’re just mismatched.” She did not confide what she’d been feeling these days. That lately, when her husband came into the same room, she felt as if the air had been sucked right out of it.

It is not sufficient to be a mother: an oyster can be a mother. Charlotte Perkins Gilman

What had stunned Mamah about Jessie’s death was how quickly, how utterly, the flesh made that transition from life force to breathless rag. What it had carried inside of it before, that brew of tenderness, wit, fierce loyalty, intelligence—the essence of Jessie—had simply vaporized. Mamah

“She says that once love leaves a marriage, then the marriage isn’t sacred anymore. But if a true, great love happens outside of marriage, it’s sacred and has its own rights. She says each fresh couple must prove that their love enhances their lives and the human race by living together. Here, listen. ‘Only cohabitation can decide the morality of a particular case.’” Frank

“Love is moral even without legal marriage.” Ellen Key’s voice rose and broke through the sound of rustling skirts. “But marriage is immoral without love.”

People who live only for their children make bad company for them.”

“Forgive my bluntness, but leaving a boring man for a stimulating one is only interesting for a while. In time, you are back where you started—still wanting. Better to find your own backbone, the strong thing in you.

“You need more time.” Ellen glanced at her watch, then called for the check. “Your journey has turned into a public shaming. That doesn’t erase the need you had in the first place to discover who you are and where you want to go. Let things calm down. Give yourself a couple of months.”

Once again she found herself a character in a morality play, cast by the dailies and watched by the public.

Mamah saw clearly now just what she had lost. She had given up her right to keep her place as the children’s most beloved.

The small, daily offices of love that had connected her to the children before—the shoe tying, the hair combing, the nightly storytelling—were no longer hers to claim.