Ghost Country (36 page)

The parish council should be able to stop Mara Stonds from embarrassing the Stonds family, the church, and the city. A few members thought the tale of Starr feeding the multitude might be true—Starr might actually be a witch, performing perverse parodies of biblical miracles. (Jesus fed people with loaves and fishes—whoever heard of fried chicken and malt liquor in connection with a divine wonder!) Remember, Rafe Lowrie said ominously, in Leviticus it says you shall not suffer a witch to live.

Nonsense, Mrs. Ephers said—there’s no witchcraft here, only Mara Stonds, showing off as per usual, trying to make mischief. I’ll talk to the doctor about this. He needs to get her shut up in the hospital where she belongs: that will put a stop to this nonsense.

In the meantime, the council agreed on two things: the Friday psychotherapy clinic must be stopped for the time being. Hector Tammuz only encouraged the homeless women in their support of
Starr. If the church really wanted to end this blasphemous activity in Chicago, they needed to root it out from their own parish. They couldn’t on the one hand tell Dr. Stonds to get his daughter off the streets if at the same time they were providing a forum for the homeless to plan further perversions.

The council’s second decision was to hold a special parish service of penitence and communion a week from Saturday. Rafe Lowrie was conducting his Family Matters seminar then, his meeting of businessmen who wanted to reclaim their God-given authority over their families; Pastor Emerson should hold a family service beforehand.

Pastor Emerson had not previously been a supporter of Rafe or his Family Matters group. He resented Rafe’s efforts to show Emerson how to run the church, and didn’t like the books and pamphlets Rafe showered him with on a better interpretation of Scripture than Emerson used in his sermons.

But the pastor was angry with the homeless women, with Mara Stonds, and especially Starr, for the humiliations he’d suffered at the wall. It was time the parish exerted its authority. On Sunday he announced the special service from the pulpit, and preached ferociously on a text from First Timothy: “If a man does not know how to manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way, how can he care for God’s church?”

Emerson told the congregation that he would open Rafe’s meeting with a community service of penance and communion, to show God they were truly sorry for their role in encouraging the breakdown of public morality: after all, it was the women at Hagar’s House who had first started the hysteria about the wall and Starr. It was their own Mara Stonds who had become a ringleader down there. The whole debacle showed that they had not done their job as a parish in guiding their young people, because wasn’t Mara a product of twelve years in Orleans Street Sunday schools? And yet they had failed to provide her with the bulwark of faith to withstand a dangerous cult leader like Starr. The parish had become too focused on material wealth—looking pointedly at Rafe—and on
substituting trendy social causes for faith—here talking directly to Sylvia Lenore—and forgotten the Lord: It was He who made us and not we ourselves.

After the service, men began signing up for the retreat. All the following week the phone in the church office rang with men eager to assert their God-given authority. None of this idiotic Ironman stuff, going off into the woods, sitting around naked pounding drums, but the kind of sober Christian seminar a businessman could understand.

Dr. Stonds knew, from Mrs. Ephers, how upset the parish council was with Mara as one of the ringleaders of the women at the wall. When he heard Emerson’s sermon, his own fury with Mara swelled. Every grievance he’d ever felt against his granddaughter bounced through his head. How dare she expose him like this to public censure?

After Hector’s useless attempt to bring Mara into the hospital last month, Dr. Stonds had washed his hands of Mara: she refused help, then let her rot, as her mother and grandmother had before her. But the public gossip was intolerable. He finally agreed with Hilda Ephers, it was time to do something. And if she emulated Beatrix further, well, so be it.

But it was not that easy to unearth Mara. Starr never went to the same park two nights running. Dr. Stonds was not about to lower his dignity by hiking along beaches and rocky inlets looking for his granddaughter, even with police in tow. He did consent to send two men from the hospital’s private security force to the wall in the evenings when Mara was most likely to be there, but by the time they had forced their way through the crowd of women who gathered in front of Starr and Luisa, Mara had fled into the alleys behind the hotel garage.

Day thirty on Underground Wacker, day thirty-one …

G
IAN PALMETTO
,
PRESIDENT
of the Pleiades, is beside himself. The Pleiades’ cancellations stand at over fifty percent: clients seeking quiet and anonymity don’t want to fight their way past women praying the rosary, women douching themselves in rusty water from the wall, women nursing their howling infants, not to mention the build-up of garbage as all the miracle seekers drop their McDonald’s wrappers and Starbucks cups in the road. True, these out-of-town visitors need a place to sleep, but they go to cheap motor lodges by the expressway, not luxury hotels where rates start at a hundred eighty a night and float skyward.

Palmetto’s corporate masters have phoned, faxed, and now arrived in person. At the law firm of Scandon and Atter, meetings take place between Mervin Clinator, head of the Olympus Group, and Leigh Wilton, the senior partner. On Thursday afternoon Harriet, in disgrace for not somehow controlling events, sits at a remote end of the table, relegated essentially to paralegal status. Taking notes, doing research, not venturing an opinion or suggestion. Gian Palmetto is at the other end, equally disgraced for letting homeless women ruin the Pleiades’ bookings.

A senior lawyer from the city—with entourage—is also present.
The Olympus president fretfully wonders why the police can’t keep people away—they’re trespassing, not to mention littering and loitering.

The corporation counsel is sympathetic. The city knows how much the Pleiades has invested in arts in Chicago, not to mention gifts to the mayor’s election funds. The city is detailing extra Streets and Sanitation crews to keep the public areas free of litter. And they’ll certainly station police down there twenty-four hours a day to keep crowds from blocking access to the Pleiades garage.

Not good enough, Olympus president Clinator snaps. We want that area cleared.

Look, says the corporation counsel, if it were only homeless women down there we’d urge the cops to move them on. Of course that statement stays inside this room. All the men nod, sure.

But now there are three problems—the television cameras, the tourists, and the suit filed by the First Freedoms Forum. The hotel can’t be sued for violating the miracle seekers’ First Amendment rights, but the city can. Olympus president Clinator and senior partner Leigh Wilton have to understand, given the high visibility the situation has right now, the city must observe the public forum doctrine and keep the street and sidewalk open to the miracle seekers’ expressive activity.

What about just tearing down the damned wall, putting in new plumbing, and ending the story? the Olympus president asks.

The corporation counsel draws a circle on the table with his finger. An excellent idea, if the hotel can wait out the current frenzy. It will just look so bad for them to be callous about the faith of very religious women, one of whom is the sister of an important bishop, another married to the head of a construction firm that gives a lot of money to the mayor’s campaign chest.

And what if the frenzy never dies down? Olympus demands.

Leigh Wilton pulls out his trump card. He says he’s spoken to Clyde Hanaper over at Midwest Hospital. There’s a drunk, used to be a great singer, who hangs around the wall, seems to be a lesbian, having an affair with that big woman—what’s her name, Harriet?
—Starr, that’s right, gal who’s kind of a ringleader for the group. Anyway, the drunk’s brother is fed up, thinks she’s corrupting his teenage daughter, wants to get her off the streets into a clinic someplace. If the brother will pay for the drunk, Scandon and Atter could kick in something for Starr, send her off for a psychiatric exam, maybe put her in a locked ward over at Midwest.

The problem is, this Starr seems to have a mesmerizing effect on the women at the wall. So they can’t pick her up during the day, when the crowds are most intense, or when the camera crews are likely to be there. Also, she isn’t always at the wall and they don’t know where she sleeps at night. But the hospital thinks they can track her down, through a resident who’s been working with the homeless women. They’ll try tonight, maybe catch the women while they’re asleep. If this Starr’s out of the way …

The head of the Olympus chain laughs. I’d like to catch that broad while she was asleep. From the photos, those knockers of hers could give you a TKO with one blow.

Gian Palmetto and Leigh Wilton neigh with laughter: the head of the hotel chain is making a joke, the tension is suddenly lessened. The meeting breaks down into general ribaldry as the men try to top one another’s jokes. Harriet feels herself disappearing. Not a person, not a lawyer, a note-taking thing for the first three hours, now a body thing as the Olympus president rakes her own bosom with greedy eyes, looking past her pale green suit jacket, her silk shirt, to her small breasts, even though as always they’re shielded by a bra. Hers is the only female presence, besides the corporation counsel’s paralegal, and as the discussion becomes more graphic, they all watch her, wanting to know if they are shocking her, scaring her. She rises without moving her hips and heads for the door.

Ah, honey, can’t you take a joke? Olympus president asks.

Harriet turns in the entryway. Was that a joke? Forgive me—I never had the advantage of a schoolboy’s locker room to learn humor.

She leaves, and is cornered later by Leigh Wilton. These are important clients who are undergoing a major shock. They need
our support, and that includes letting them vent steam through jokes which you or I might not personally find funny.

“Don’t I get any support from the firm, Leigh?” Harriet asks. “You’re making me the whipping girl for a situation that no one could have managed. And when the client starts demeaning me by making comments about women’s genitals, I’m supposed to laugh. Suppose I had shared a female joke—a belly laugh over how all you men measure your penises, terrified that one is shorter than the other, and the amusement women feel over your anxiety. Would that have been the same?”

“What’s gotten into you, Harriet? You used to be a reliable team player. The partnership vote will be taken after Labor Day. You’ve been on a fast track for six years. Don’t make me start to wonder whether you really have a permanent home at Scandon and Atter.” Leigh Wilton stares at her, his eyes so wide they seem about to pop from his head. “Now I’m going to forget about your behavior this morning. Just let me have the meeting minutes before six. And get me cases and precedents under Section 1983 to see if we have any maneuvering room. Meanwhile I’m going to talk to that guy Hanaper over at Midwest Hospital. I think it’s worth our while to cover this Starr creature’s medical bills for a few days if that will defuse the situation.”

He stops to see if she’s going to react in any way. Her calmness reassures him—she’s still a good girl, a team player.

“Clinator and I are having dinner over at the Casino Club to see where we stand. When you get the minutes ready, go home and put on a nice sexy dress, show some cleavage, and come join us—that’ll let the Olympus guys know you’re apologizing for being a hard-ass this afternoon. Eight o’clock. You know where it is, right?”

He slaps her on the fanny and moves on to his own office. Harriet stands in the hall. Show cleavage to mollify the client. If she displays her crotch as well, will Leigh Wilton make her a partner?

In her office she lines up a stack of legal pads, squares them against the end of the desk. She feels as though she’s in an invisible
box, which makes it hard to move her arms. Is this what drove Mara from the Hotel Pleiades Special Events office, these crude jokes and insults? Should she have been learning something from Beebie, instead of judging her? If this happened to Mara, she’d shave her head and show up at the Casino Club buff naked. Harriet smiles faintly, but assures herself she is nothing like Mara—she would never do such a thing, or camp out behind Professor Lontano’s office, or picket with homeless women at the Hotel Pleiades.

She wants to write out a letter of resignation and leave, but all her training is against such impulsive behavior. She needs to talk to someone who can help her decide what to do.

Grandfather. His thick white brows contracting. Don’t tell me you’re suddenly turning as temperamental as your mother or your sister, Harriet. You’ve always shown such good judgment—I thought I could count on you. Now be a good girl. I’ll put in a call to Leigh Wilton, we sit on that foundation board together.

Mephers. Mara is ruining your life. If she hadn’t run away to that hotel garage, stirred up all that trouble over the crazy homeless woman, none of this would have happened.

Pastor Emerson. Maybe things were said in the heat of the moment that everybody’s ashamed of now. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek—you pray on it, but this seems to be one of those situations where Jesus had the right advice.

Harriet thinks of the women she went to college with, the suitors who used to flock to the Graham Street apartment. How can she be thirty-two and have no real friends? What world has she been inhabiting, where she could be so isolated from the human race and think she was happy?

She pulls the notes of the meeting toward her and starts to dictate them into a coherent report, then erases the tape. It’s five o’clock now: Leigh has only asked for the minutes by six as an extra humiliation—she would have to type them up, and research the precedents under Section 1983 herself, since it’s too late in the day to get paralegal or clerical support for the job. A year ago—six
weeks ago—Grandfather’s good girl would have done it, but today she doesn’t have the energy.