Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [145]
No one who knew O’Connor believed that he willingly left the San Fernando Valley ranch. “That property was his business and his world,” said Hill. “Ayn knew it. There was no way she didn’t know how badly she was hurting Frank.” Over the years, acquaintances noticed her uneasiness with the subject of the move. Years out of California, she would talk about how much she hated the place, adding, “You feel the same way, don’t you, Frank? Don’t you?” “She said it too often,” observed Barbara. “She said it too insistently.” Hill, defending her friend, urged, “Please do stop and think who Ayn Rand was. She was the brightest and most determined person anyone had ever met. Who did she put first? Who did she advise all of us to put first? She knew what she had always known, that she would be important to the world. Frank knew it, too, and gave her what she wanted. Not because he was submissive or because she made the money, but because he recognized her talent and ability.”
He made the best of the move. Within a year or two, he found a part-time job working for an East Side florist, arranging flower displays in the lobbies of buildings. He had a business card that read, “Francisco, the Lobbyist.” A few years later, he began to paint—figures, cityscapes, and still lifes with flowers. When Buzzy visited on business in the middle 1950s, Rand showed him her husband’s paintings. “It just broke Buzzy’s heart that Frank, who had been working on acres of beautiful gladiolas—here he was in [the apartment in New York] painting the damned flowers instead of growing them,” said Hill. “I asked, ‘But what about Frank’s work itself, Buzzy?’ Buzzy hesitated. ‘It’s not that good, Ruth,’” he told her. Some others thought him gifted, though untrained.
Interestingly, before the Hills lost regular contact with Ayn and Frank, which—except for mailing off their monthly checks—they soon did, they discovered that both O’Connors were indifferent housekeepers, to put it mildly. At the ranch, Ruth found drawers filled with unopened fan mail, business letters, circulars, and bills. In Rand’s study, the floor was littered with railroad magazines, research material for her novel. There were more than two hundred grocer’s cartons, each divided into sections and filled to the brim with colored stones Rand had collected and sorted. In the kitchen, empty cottage cheese cartons, the remains of Frank’s favorite lunch, were heaped from countertops halfway to the ceiling. The servants evidently had been busy making their own collections; apart from whatever they may have taken with them, they had hidden jars of jams and jellies, bottles of artichoke hearts, and other delectables under chair cushions in their rooms. In the New York apartment, the trend continued. Visitors remembered that the cats sharpened their claws on the upholstered furniture, leaving tattered edges, and left a foul smell in the air; and that bill collectors sometimes showed up at the door. It was Frank’s job to pay the bills. Some saw his casual approach to these duties as a passive form of protest, but others viewed their absentmindedness in practical affairs as natural and charming.
The apartment Berner had rented for them was not only relatively small but also plain. First-time visitors, expecting Roarkian grandeur along the lines of the Neutra house, were surprised by its modesty. An entrance foyer doubled as the dining room, with a black-lacquered table, designed by O’Connor, pushed against a mirrored wall. Formal dinners were eaten there; otherwise, the table served as a work surface for a series of manuscript typists. A small kitchen opened off the foyer. The living room was small, with windows on the far wall, and was decorated by Frank with mid-century modern chairs and a black tweed sofa, glass-topped tables, and green-blue pillows