The Saint Louisans (7 page)

No seventeen-year-old girl says or consciously thinks it, at least not in this novel. But they sense it, and that was what I sensed. Aunt Mary gave the final blow.

“Cindy Lee, I'm your guardian, and there's no way I'll let you marry Len. If you do, it will be the stupidest thing you'll ever do. No matter how old you live to be, you'll look on this as a tragedy. I forbid it.”

A smile almost came to my lips as I cocked the trigger and narrowed my eyes. “I'm pregnant.”

Aunt Mary and Spud swallowed their bile and came to the wedding, held in the Presbyterian church, then a reception in the knotty-pine VFW hall. So I had my coronation. I was queen. Len and I moved to St. Louis, where he worked in a body shop in Dogtown, near rail yards where trains clack-clacked like a steel heartbeat. For three weeks, Len and I were in newlywed paradise.

Then he hit me.

When I look back at that time, everything is tinted sepia, imitating the tight rows of brick flats that make up Dogtown. I recall it as a world of stubby houses, shoe-box like factories, dime store bars, and smeared windows of body shops and tawdry stores that defined those dun-colored years.

Turns out Len had been kicked out of the army for taking a swing at an officer. He'd sailed through eleven jobs since he and Uncle Sam parted ways. In our three room flat, I noticed the mood swings. He slept with a loaded snub-nose under his pillow. Once, after Pierce was born, I woke to find Len staring into the crib. When I got up, the floor creaked and he whipped around, his pistol inches from my nose.

“People tell me. Told me. About you.”

I swallowed. “What people?”

He stared and tapped his temple with the gun barrel. When I picked up Pierce, Len wandered into the kitchen for a shot of whiskey.

Aunt Mary cut me off. The Seven Dwarfs snickered, at least the ones not yet carried off by heart attacks, dementia, collapsing kidneys.
You see? Just like her father. Ike always had wild blood.

It's bitter, those years. That awful growing-up time, like the numbness of a case of frostbite. After another long night of Len mumbling to the walls, after he slapped me because his voices told him who I was seeing, what I was doing, I went to the local branch of the library, bouncing Pierce on my knee and ignoring the snoring bum across the table as I leafed through the dog-eared pages of a psychiatric textbook, seeing its description of schizophrenia a mirror of Len. Now what?

Len's great love was still the Harley, and Dawg, a tick-shaped man who moonlighted selling stolen auto parts, was his chum. Dawg began to feel me up one day, and I pushed him away. Had I told Len, I knew his voices would blame me. There was an all-night poker game in Len's body shop, and Len
lost his Harley to Dawg. Booze flowed like a ninety-proof Niagara Falls. One of the Hoosiers kept needling Len. I knew Len probably twitched and blinked, like before he hit me. Four gunshots later, Dawg and a Hoosier sprawled on the floor as everyone else burst out through doors and windows. Len roared off on his Harley, headed to our flat to finish me off, too, but he ran a red light and crashed into a pick-up. Locals in the corner bar lifted their heads away from the Blues game on TV. Since it was neck-to-neck with the Blackhawks, it was only for a moment.

My screen door rattled as someone knocked on it. I lay down my copy of
Catch-22
and opened the door to a baggy-eyed cop whose sleek black hair and five-o-clock shadow reminded me of a Greek waiter.

“Mrs. Marbles?”

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“I'm Officer Hittler, and I have some bad news about your husband.” He was stiff, antiseptically polite.

I read his nameplate. “Your name's really Hittler?”

“There's been an accident, ma'am. Your husband's at Barnes, but he's being moved to Arsenal. And, yes, ma'am. That is my real name.”

Arsenal is St. Louis shorthand for the State Mental Hospital west of Tower Grove Park on Arsenal Street.

The mental hospital is perched on a hill just west of Tower Grove Park, and its green cupola and tall wings spread out in low-rent Baroque grandiosity. The hospital is a Versailles for the mad. After an interview with Len, the docs would never let him out. My visits to him were dutiful but pained as I traveled past dirty brick flats and shotgun houses across from the hospital. Len vowed to get out and kill me; he'd known all along, should have listened to the voices who knew me best.

I melted into a life of food stamps, WIC, and minimum wage, and Len melted into his art. His art therapist gushed. “Len has become very creative, a Picasso with shades of Van Gogh as he depicted what would happen to you, Mrs. Marbles.”

She spoke of his long suppressed innate artistic abilities, similar to those of many schizophrenic patients. Len won first prize for his
Madonna and
Child
. His therapist continued: “The tones of red and silver for the knife are superb…and the expression of the Madonna's pain recalls a flash of Guernica. And, her resemblance to you is uncanny.” I stared back as I held a grasping, wiggling Pierce, declining to view Len's imagining of my demise.

One day when I went to visit, I was told Len was gone. My anxious hugging of Pierce ended when the measured steps of the chief resident approached. His voice rustled like pages of the latest psychiatric bulletin. There was overcrowding at the hospital, and Len was transferred to St. Vincent's Hospital. He offered me Len's artwork, smiling. The sketch of Jezebel was breathtaking. “Has your features,” he said, “although the cubist style makes it hard to see.”

St. Vincent's Hospital was in the north suburbs on Natural Bridge Road, leading to the airport. My visits were less frequent because of the irregularity of bus schedules and the difficulty of getting a sitter for Pierce in that wondrous, pre-daycare era. Going through the northside, I was always being hit on by groups of black men.

Len filled out, and through clay and acrylic, continued his artistic doom of me. The hospital's mansard towers and spacious grounds was another palace of insanity that looked like a château in France. Inside, I passed nuns, habits swishing as they glided to moans and shouts down the dimly lit corridors where Jesus and Our Lady sadly looked on, lacking Gadarene swine to cast demons into.

Two days before Pierce's third birthday, I got the call. Len had hanged himself. As my son played in the backyard, and the next door neighbor polished his Impala, a pile of stolen car batteries semi-hidden in straw-like weeds on the lip of his shingled garage, I stared at the fingers of the barren trees surrounding the house and saw buds push out. The grass dared to green. Clouds blew back like puffy tumbleweeds to reveal a Botticelli sky. I sunk back into my chair, relieved. Once again, I lived in glorious Technicolor.

Margot shook her head as my narrative died away, her clear eyes shrouded in sadness. “Oh, Lee. How terrible.”

“Stupid.” I snapped into the clinical. “Aunt Mary was right, of course. It was my choice, and I don't regret Pierce. He's a fine son.”

“Does he live in St. Louis?” Margot brightened, like she seemed hopeful for an introduction.

“He lives in Germany. He's a chemist. His wife is expecting.”

“Saul told me you have a daughter, too.”

“From my second marriage. Jama.”

“Jama? What an unusual name. Is it something Asian?”

“No,” I sighed, wanting to close the conversation, “she was named after the
Journal of the American Medical Association
.” I paused as Margot gave a gentle laugh. “It was my idea of childhood names. I named Pierce after my hero of the time, Hawkeye Pierce. Jama …” The less said about my wayward daughter, the better. “I want to know if you've reconsidered chemo. I'd like to discuss your care—”

“Children are such a consolation. At least it starts out that way.”

That last sentence darkened her already sunken face. I sensed the clue to her indecision about undergoing chemotherapy treatments. She gave me the opening, and I took it. “Margot … Pierre and Terri. Maybe it's time for a reconciliation.”

“We can talk about my children another time. I'd like to hear how you became a nurse.”

Closing the door on her children and keeping mine open wasn't what I had in mind. Besides, it was getting late.

“Margot, I've really been here too long—”

“It was because of Pierce, wasn't it? So you could provide for him. I know you'd do anything for your child.”

There was an immediate, innate sadness to Margot's tone, matching late afternoon shadows in the mansion's dignified corners. Her hand touched my wrist, and like her eyes, its touch was soft and pleading, and I couldn't help but think back to that time.

“Yes, anything. I scraped by. One day after I staggered up the stairs after a day of stocking canned goods and bagging groceries, my body was drained. I stared at my apartment door, and knew I couldn't do this anymore, just piddling around. My body and brain froze. Pierce pushed at the door. I blinked and let him in.”

It was easy to remember. “The apartment still smelled of Len. A potpourri of leather, sweat, and a faint whiff of gun oil. It was chicken pot pie night, and I
plopped onto the couch as Pierce played with his plastic cowboys and Indians.

“Then?” Margot asked softly, unblinking.

“I flipped on the TV. Lo and behold, the opening to
South Pacific
began. I delved into it. The tunes came back, and they were great, but I loved Nellie Forbush. It wasn't so much her and the Frenchman, but her as the wisecracking, confident nurse. The princess gig was done, and Nellie scooted over into my psyche. A tiara replaced by a nurses cap.”

“And a cape,” Margot said with a smile. She beamed at me in a strange way, as if she were taking pride in my accomplishments, as if she were a satisfied kid delighted at the happy ending of a Disney movie that she had predicted all along.

“The next day, I began looking into nursing schools.” A slight tingle as I recalled making phone calls, reading crisp, fresh brochures. “The community college at Dubourg had a nursing program at three dollars a credit hour. That was doable.” I shrugged. “So, I went home, proving Tom Wolfe wrong. The rest is history. Or herstory, if we want to do a Gloria Steinem.”

For a moment, I enjoyed recalling that long ago streak of activity building a new life. “I stopped calling myself Cindy Lee. I just became ‘Lee.' It was like killing a part of myself and moving on.”

Margot's eyes moistened. “Oh, Lee,” she whispered. “How terrible it was for you. All of that suffering.”

I offered her some Kleenex from the box on the table, and from the corner of my eye, I caught Rainer's stare, as if I'd slapped Margot. Her happy mood had suddenly collapsed into a sadness I couldn't fathom. And what was it with the butler?

“Hey,” I took her hands. “Come on. Happy ending. Please. Something's wrong. What is it? I'm here to help.”

She leaned on her cane and rose. “Come with me. I must show you something.”

Under Rainer's wary, but distant eye, I helped Margot as she led me up to her bedroom. We entered a sunny chamber whose decorum whispered elegance and security.

From a handsome boudoir of dark cherry wood, she took out an inlaid casket of silver and opened it. Even from three feet away, I caught the sparkle of jewelry. Margot smiled and held up a diamond necklace with three dark rubies.

“Many years ago, Mrs. Desloge and I had a friendly rivalry over jewelry. I bought this in Florence and topped her at a charity dinner for the opera. I was triumphant. Until the next Veiled Prophet Ball.”

She indicated I sit before her mirror. “I want to see how it looks on you.”

Within the fogging edges of the old mirror, Margot pinned on the necklace. Around my neck, it sparkled in sedate dignity.

“It's beautiful,” I said.

“It's yours.”

I immediately unsnapped it and dropped it back into her hand. “I don't accept gifts. It's unethical.”

Without a word, the kindness left her eyes as she forced the necklace back into my open palm and closed it, her frail hand now a vise, the stones pricking the hollow of my hand.

“I insist, Lee, and when a Desouche insists, it's Noblesse oblige.”

I stood, hands on hips. “What do you want?”

“Admirable,” she said. “What a strong woman you are. So much life. I thank God you came here.”

Rainer's Nordic eye caught it all from the door, and his hard gaze told me he definitely did not approve.

Margot closed the necklace in a velvet container and put it in my hand, then led me out to the stairs. “In three days I'm having a dinner party and you're coming.”

We descended the stairs. She studied her portrait.

“I suggest you wear the necklace with black. The rubies and your blonde hair will make quite a splash. Jewelry, you know, is a woman's calling card.”

I decided to go with the flow. At least for now. “Okay, but there's a mystery here. Will you tell me what it's all about it if I come?”

She nodded with a sweetness hard to resist. “Yes, Lee. I can't wait any longer. I'll tell you everything. I promise.”

Rainer frowned. A cloud brushed outside, darkening her portrait.

Saul and I hooked up at one of the local waterholes on Euclid in the Central West End. Since Barnes-Jewish Children's hospital was down the block, tables and booths were filled with medical staff on break, fleeing the cafeteria. Leaves outside were brilliant, and the street chilly and the menu selections had changed from summer salads to fall soups.

I'd just shown him the necklace, which he admired with a low whistle.

“She wants something,” I said as Saul passed it back. “I'm trying to help her cope, but she keeps wanting me to talk about my life.”

“You've led a pretty interesting life.”

“Hardly. At least not that interesting.” I ate a spoonful of the goat cheese and broccoli soup mixed with wild mushrooms. “She keeps watching me. ‘Drinking me in,' as they say in old novels. When she's like that, she seems so … mysterious. Mysterious and sad. I can't figure out what's bothering her.”