The Saint Louisans (15 page)

Rainer sighed and looked ahead with a butler's sternness. “That is not enough. What kind of German is she?”

This made Margot force a quick smile at his aloofness. “You see why I keep Rainer. He's unflappable, and so helpful. Many times in the past, especially with Lucas.”

I caught Rainer's stare, ready to tune us out. Margot looked to him. “Rainer.”

He turned. “Madam, I have to do the bills.”

“Yes,” Margot said, “but first, bring it.”

Rainer exited, then immediately returned with an envelope. Margot
indicated I take the envelope and open it. I did so as Rainer glared and her smile widened.

The letter was bordered in a rich silver gilt with ornate engraving and regal calligraphy. Had I been blind, my fingers could have traced its swirls.

“An invitation,” I said, “to the Veiled Prophet Ball.”

Margot leaned close and squeezed my hand. “You're going with me. I want to show you off. It's my way to expunge all of this sadness. It's my last ball. I know this, but it will be the finest since I was crowned Queen.”

Rainer looked off as if to mute his disapproval. Margot's pleasure rose as shadows lengthened in the room.

The Chase Park Plaza hotel is a cornerstone of St. Louis glitz, strategically boxed at Lindell and Kingshighway. Forest Park and the gated isle of Portland Place on the one side, all of it nestled in the Central West End. Once a crash pad for visiting celebrities, now the Chase is more of a retirement center for the aged affluent. It still maintains spice in its bars, restaurants, and ballrooms lining its marble corridor.

The Veiled Prophet Ball, after being bounced from Kiel Auditorium by the Civil Rights crowd, was held here. Years ago, while a nurse, I walked with Pierce and a squalling Jama past streets choked with late-model sedans. Extra cops patrolled the chariots of old money.

I waited for Terri to enter the lobby. Its marble interior clattered with a gaggle of conventioneers, then an elevator chimed. Following Saul's telling me of Terri's schedule, I was rewarded with her marching across the lobby, a cheerful Lab leashed, its tongue panting for walkies. Her russet and chestnut slacks and cable sweater complemented both Lab and leaves. I followed her outside to the corner.

“Terri!” I called out.

Her frown could have slashed my face. She bounded down to the corner of Euclid, I after her.

The Lab turned and barked, its tone more exuberant than protective. A flash of sun from slits of brick blazed his coat. She made it to the corner and its black pompous street lamps that looked as if they were heisted from the World's Fair.

The Lab had to make a pit stop. I closed in on a rigid, wary Terri. “Thanks for not turning the dog loose on me,” I said, catching my breath.

Terri clicked like a revolver. “I'm not supposed to talk to you. My attorney's advice.” The lab sniffed my shoes, then wagged his tail.

I bent to pet him, but as I did, Terri jerked him away and trooped down Euclid. I did a tally ho and caught up while Terri fumed.

“That was so well planned, ‘Nurse Lee.' Just walking into the dinner and becoming the lost princess.”

“You saw my expression. I was just as shocked as you.”

“I'm sure you do drama queen as much as empty bedpans.”

“I'm not an enemy.” Another uneasy pause. “Margot is dying. She needs you.”

“Tell it to my attorney. Now go away.”

She pulled the Lab around and almost rammed me on her way back to the Chase. “Pierre mentioned your little meeting. I suppose you've formed a nice picture of the family. Mom the doting, cultured
materfamilias
. Pierre the sensitive, esoteric son. Lucas, of course, the fallen angel, and you're the precious little Mary Poppins, come in to clean up our fuck-ups. And me,” Terri lowered her voice, “I'm the wicked stepsister. Oh, I forgot. I'm the real sister. You're the step one.”

I sighed, glad the monologue was done. “Let's not be enemies.”

“Can the friendly advice, nurse. Cutting me and Pierre out is a game she's wanted to play for a long time. Another way of showing her disapproval of the way I've lived my life. My three marriages. Did you tell her about your two?”

I raised an eyebrow. “My dossier must be good bedtime reading, especially my second ex. Sky's a real hoot. Of course, after your first is a schitzo and hangs himself, it only gets better. You've got it all wrong. I'm not here for the inheritance.”

“Bullshit. Get out of our lives.”

I decided to play along, anything to keep her talking, or at least slow down as we closed in on the entrance to the Chase. “She told me about Lucas. How he left. It broke her heart.”

“Yeah, heartbreaking was his specialty. What else is new? That's her problem. Dad and she had this Iron Curtain between them and me and
Pierre, blaming us, as if we could do anything.” Terri's eyes darkened. “She probably said if you'd been there, you would have saved big brother, right?”

I sighed. “Okay. What do you want?”

“Repudiate any will she makes. Completely. In writing. After Mom's—” she paused, then stared. “After it's over, we'll give you a reward. Pierre and I. See my lawyer, sign the agreement—”

“Pierre—”

“Don't let his gentle nature fool you. He'll fight dirty.”

We approached the entrance to the cinema in the Chase. A crowd was already trickling in for the rush-hour show.

“Terri, do you want to destroy the mansion?”

“Every single brick.”

A sudden thought came to me. “Dan Smatters approached me. About making a deal. Are you with him on gutting it?”

She stopped and stared. “You think it's a palace, don't you? You and that Jew boyfriend of yours? It's a piece of pretentious crap. We want it to go. Remember, ‘Sis'; Pierre and I will drag you through the courts a dozen years if we have to. It's our estate. You'll never see a penny.”

She gave her dog a pat, then glared at me. “From now on, talk to my lawyer.” I sighed as heiress and pooch sailed past the smiling doorman.

At the Arch with Saul, I mused that St. Louis was the eye of Missouri. Now I saw my ‘family' consisted of three blind people, and I had to open their eyes from their bitterness and evasion. Was I up to it? Was anyone? It was turning dark with winter's approach. Headlights swished back and forth like furtive lanterns. Hands deep in my pockets, I walked home, and, worn out from all the intrigue, ordered Imo's.

It's the square beyond compare.

That's the motto of Imo's pizza, St. Louis's own, baked on thin crust and served not as pie slices but small squares. I meditated as I ate, tossing a thick chunk of sausage to Yul, my yowling Siamese. He caught it in midair.

I'd pulled out old photographs of my father. My dad. The handsome Ike Taylor posed by his jet or in uniform, a black and white parent's world of simple verity. My solid, loving father who died on active duty. For a while, I grew up in an atomic family in the Atomic age. No matter what slings and arrows of outrageous fortune came later, I had a father who was straight and square. Except the adultery, of course. He always reminded me of Lindbergh, who was almost worshiped as a god, our Midwestern Daedalus. As I munched on a square and gazed at Ike, I recalled when St. Louis killed Lindy.

It was the summer of 1981, and city air closed in like a paper bag over my head.

The downtown lunch crowd clustered at Tenth and Chestnut behind wooden barriers, excited as the headache ball revved up. The mood was festive, as befits funeral games. On the wall of a multi-storied garage, Lindbergh's mural shone in glory. It was a copy of the famous photo of him in his flying helmet, the long flaps curving out like a Greek warrior's helmet, his dreamy eyes looking up off center.

The portrait was a series of black and white cubes, making Lindy abstract yet iconic, as if you were seeing him in a foggy mosaic. It was called Lindy Squared, an example of seventies mural art seeded downtown to save the city from its stupor.

By the eighties, instead of art, corporate expansion was the next way to rejuvenate downtown. Southwestern Bell bought the garage space to expand a new tower, and Lindy had to go. Jama stood by my side, in a pastel sun dress and large sunglasses, squirming in ten-year-old impatience as she scrunched her mouth.

“When's he gonna get it? It's like … forever!”

“Patience child,” I said. “Nothing starts on time. Not even you.” Jama had been the product of a long delivery, my labor pains a foretaste of life to come. We smelled hot dogs from a nearby stand. Cherry and raspberry snow cone flavorings melted on the sidewalk like sugary blood.

Two dancers bopped and twisted to a boom box's screeching. Jama frowned again. “Hey, they're doing weirdo disco.”

“It's the Lindy Hop,” I said, trying to inculcate bits of history into her psyche. The man slid the woman under his arched legs, then tossed her up and gripped her waist. A wave of oooohhhs and aaaaahhhs came from the crowd. “It's thought to be jitterbug,” I said, “but it's actually from Harlem. 1920s.”

This arcana was wasted on Jama, but when you got arcana on the brain, what are you gonna do? Pierce would have liked it, but he was away at camp.

She stamped her foot. “When they gonna?”

I tousled her hair. “And who is that behind those Foster Grants?”

Jama grinned at the slogan and struck a celebrity pose. The sunglasses were too big, making her look like a caricature of a movie star. Alas, prophesy fulfilled.

The headache ball hissed and grunted like a monster's pendulum. Cops tossed away their cigarettes, then moved people back. Cameras clicked to capture Lindy one last time. Jama giggled.

“Now he's gonna get it! Right between the eyes!”

The crowd hushed as the ball swung. The ball hit Lindy's schnoz with a
thunk
! Jama cheered with the crowd. My heart sunk. A second swing made spider webs on Lindy. A third, then the bricks tapped on the pavement.

The headache ball slammed into him like Gibson swinging a homer with bases loaded. An avalanche of bricks toppled on the fenced-off walk to cheers and claps. Jama jumped up and down, her own Lindy Hop.

KA-BOOM!

There was a ragged hole where Lindy had been.

Aunt Mary loved reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's autobiography to me. We were impressed at Lindbergh's world travels, meditating that nuclear war was more savage than the natives in Africa and New Guinea he supped with. Although I always hugged Raggedy Ann, one of my favorite toys was a Steve Canyon flying helmet and mask. I'd put it on and imagine Dad and I streaming off together in a T-33 jet trainer. It was, as they said in the fifties, a square thing, wanting to be like your old man. I reveled in it, knowing Dad, like Lindy, was a protector, a god up there.

When I take walks in Tower Grove Park, that oblong square of remembering, once a week sirens go off and a mechanical voice slurs and echoes. It was put in after 9/11 for emergency announcements, and reminds us this is only a test. That voice chills more than it reassures, telling me Lindy and Dad aren't here to protect me anymore, that such square men in black and white are no longer possible.

All I have left is the square beyond compare.

Imo's is like that to me. Saul once used it to describe urban politics, its squares of meat, peppers, and cheese parts of an urban chess board he demonstrated to me, Pierce, his very expecting wife Antje, and Jama.

If you're going to be philosophical in St. Louis, you'd better have lots of tomato, meat, cheese and bake it right. Memories must be fed to us carefully.

You'd think with the leaves gone and trees bare, with the days bleeding light out, that Tower Grove park would be a gloomy place. But it's not that way at all. There is magic in bleakness.

When I had Pierce and Jama, the park became a world of fantasy. The tree stumps looked like elephant's legs, and it became Maurice Sendak time. I'd point from trunk to trunk and pretend a Mastodon convention had come
to St. Louis. Jama would trumpet like a bull, but it came out more raspberry than mating call. Pierce and I sat amidst musky leaves and discussed the survival mores of such immense beasts. He and I studied trunks and branches, comparing them to spines, Pierce deciding that the Pin oak, with its ramrod straight torso and fan of branches, most resembled the lungs and their roots of veins; much like the Mississippi's hundred tendrils of water from her spine.

At dusk, Jama thought the branches twisted into tusks. We watched Chinese women gather the fruit of the sweetly stinking ginkgoes in wordless, squatting labor, scooping them up to make the ginkgo seeds into garnish. Intrigued, I'd ask them for the recipe, but they only nodded and whispered in Chinese.

The unintelligible words of the women transported our imaginations to a city near the Yangtze, a pit stop for mastodons on their way to Siberia and permafrost. We tried to warn them: don't go! You'll fall into a deep freeze! But mastodons are set in their ways. They lumbered off into the dark like a truck convoy in need of a trim. Jama cupped her hands. “So long, suckers!”

Fantasy is necessary for children, perhaps even more so for children of the Midwest. It's a rolling land of trees with unremarkably vapid expanses. It lacks the drama of the tropics, the vision of deserts, the magisterial Rockies and Cascades, the vast, enduring waves of the seashore. When I was a girl, I'd look at clouds and pretend they were mountain ridges, the sunset making jagged lines of purple and royal blue so I'd see a shoreline and ocean beyond. We Midwesterners must counter our stable land by seeking visions and dreaming dreams, we the land of baggy trousers, of parents who say yello and shirrr over the telephone.

So, Lindbergh is our Daedalus.
The Wizard of Oz
made Kansas a Gateway Arch to another world. Isn't
The Great Gatsby
but a Midrash on the end of make believe? Even Disney hailed from the Midwest. And once upon a time, I wanted to become Veiled Prophet Queen. Now, decades later, I finally had an invitation to the court of love and beauty.