Ghost Country

by Sara Paretsky

  Hector could see himself, ever shorter on sleep, writing prescriptions for Ativan, Prozac, Haldol, flinging drugs at the mentally ill the way GIs threw candy to children in wartorn countries. “I presume this means I can cut back on my on-call rotation, sir, since I’ll have to be out of the hospital one day a week.”

  Hanaper was disconcerted, although only briefly. “The clinic will meet on Fridays, starting a week from today. We’ll move your on-call rotation permanently to Friday night through Saturday, Tammuz. That way you can dictate your notes on your homeless clients while you’re in the on-call room, save you some time so you don’t have to be away from home any more than necessary. Although you don’t have a wife yet, do you?”

  Wanted to pick up the Steuben paperweight the bastard keeps on his desk and brain him with it. Wanted to sing, “Take this job and shove it.” But of course I just meekly said, “No, sir,” and got directions on when and where to start. Orleans Street Church has offered use of a room, since they run a homeless shelter there in an old coal basement. Hagar’s House. Wasn’t she the woman sent into the wilderness? So a fitting name: women out of the wilderness into the coal cellar.

  Hard to remember why I wanted to become a doctor. Even if I finish my residency at this hellhole it will only mean signing on with some managed care group elsewhere and doing more of the same: relying on drugs, not therapy, having an average of fifteen minutes to spend with every patient, having to justify every admission to a committee of administrative baboons who know nothing about mental illness!

  About to leave when Hanaper’s secretary buzzed him; Luisa Montcrief had arrived. The diva Stonds told us about on Tuesday, whose family is worrying. Completely forgot about her, as H obviously had, too, but he was glad to sweep me along on his coattails, have secretary page Melissa so he could have bigger audience on his great therapeutic methods.

  Bad news from the secretary: diva has no health insurance. Coverage lapsed after eighteen months of not paying premiums.

  On first sight, Montcrief very striking—dark hair swept back from strong cheekbones, expensive-looking crimson dress. Another woman with her, sister-in-law we later learned, face tight with the kind of worry all caretaking relatives get after a while.

  “Ms. Minsky? I’m Dr. Hanaper. Your brother says you’ve been having a few problems lately.”

  The diva turned mocking brows toward her sister-in-law, who said sharply, “He’s speaking to you, Janice.”

  “But my dear Karen, I am not Ms. Minsky. You are the only person with that name in the room. Unless you have Becca concealed behind the arras?” Her voice was rich, like fresh coffee, and her laugh tingled the blood of the men in the room.

  “She likes to think of herself as Madame Montcrief,” Karen Minsky told Hanaper.

  “I’m here in the room, Karen, and able to speak for myself. I like to think of myself as Madame Montcrief because that is my name. I paid a fee to a judge when I was twenty to have it legally changed. Not to ‘Madame’ of course; to Luisa Montcrief. ‘Madame’ is a courtesy title out of respect to my eminence in the world of music. So it is really never appropriate to call me anything else.”

  “Except when you want to use the Minsky money,” Karen said sharply.

  “Even though I changed my name I didn’t have a DNA transplant: I am still Miriam and Herschel Minsky’s daughter. I’m entitled to my share of their estate.”

  “She squandered her share of the inheritance—”

  “Which included half the money our parents had to leave, but nothing from the profits of the scrap iron empire. I don’t think I’m beyond my rights in wanting some of that cash flow.”

  “Harry has worked every day of his life since he was fifteen in that scrap yard. He’s earned that money. You’re ashamed to have anyone know you’re a Minsky, even by DNA.”

  “When Harry sold my home in Campania—”

  “To pay the debts you’d built up around the world—”

  “Ah, ladies,” Dr. Hanaper broke in, “you may both have valid points here, but let’s try to see what is bothering Ms. Montcrief.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me that a better agent wouldn’t cure,” the diva said. “Harry and Karen are nervous about my not working, but they have no idea how I feel, a world-class opera star, not to have had an engagement for almost three years.”

  “People covered up for your drinking as long as they could,” Karen said, her face flushed. “Longer than I would have. I don’t know what hold you had over Piero Benedetti at the Met, but he brought you to New York to play Desdemona even after you were arrested in London for assaulting a member of the audience.”

  “Assault?” Hanaper asked. “With a weapon?”

  “She threw a decanter at a woman. From the stage.”

  “The ridiculous creature was talking so loudly during the first act of Tosca I could barely hear my cues. I have perfect pitch, but I do need to know when someone else has finished singing so that I can time my entrance. By the time Scarpia was forcing me to sign my lover’s death warrant the woman was so loud she spoiled my approach to Vissi d’arte.’ After the performance my fellow cast members bought me dinner in gratitude for silencing her.”

  “Was that before or after the police came for you?” Karen asked with heavy sarcasm. “If you hadn’t drunk most of a bottle of Scotch before going on in the second act you might have been more aware of the production than of the audience. Anyway, I don’t think it was the woman’s speaking—it was the boos from the balcony that interrupted your performance.”

  Karen turned to Hanaper. “Even then Piero Benedetti brought her back to the Met. That’s where the end really came.”

  “Karen, it is pathetic that you are so resentful of me you have to slander me in front of total strangers.” The diva smiled at Hanaper. “Her life has revolved around the house Harry built for her in Highland Park and her only child Rebecca. She’s always been jealous of Becca’s attachment to me: the poor child isn’t exposed to culture, or glamour, and I provide her with both.”

  At this point I thought poor Karen Minsky was going to strangle Montcrief. Same thing must have occurred to Hanaper—not always lacking in insight: he suggested Karen wait outside while he finished talking to Madame Montcrief. The interview went on for half an hour, with the singer denying that she was anything but a social drinker, talking of the jealousies in the opera world that led to slanderous reports of her drinking.

  “Your brother says you stole his credit cards and ran up quite a hotel bill this last month. That doesn’t sound like slander, does it?” Hanaper said.

  “Harry and I are twins, but we’re not identical.” She laughed heartily at her own joke. “We’ve never seen eye-to-eye on anything, even as children: he always preferred Queen Esther to Vashti, so that’s who he married. Now he wants me banished.”

  Hanaper pounced on this, thinking he was getting a first true sign of delusions.

  The diva threw up her hands—a theatrical gesture, yet somehow, from her, genuine as well. “Oh, dear: you really haven’t heard of the Book of Esther, Doctor? There was a time when you could expect to carry on a cultivated conversation with a man of medicine. That’s still true in Italy, you know: the most devoted fans of opera there are often in the medical ranks. Or the clerical. And if I had made such a statement to one of them, they would instantly have understood all the relationships in my brother’s life. But I suppose with drugs and machines to rely on American doctors acquire a technician’s approach to problem solving.”

  Wanted to applaud her, but engrossed myself in notes while Hanaper stared at me suspiciously. He summoned the sister-in-law, said “Tough love” the only thing to do in cases like this. Of course if diva had insurance he could recommend Midwest Hospital’s in-patient alcohol dependency program, but if Mrs. Minsky wasn’t prepared to pay the bill? Mrs. Minsky emphatically not ready to pay a twenty-thousand-dollar hospital bill.

  Then, H advised, don’t let her sponge off the family, give her on
e last chance, if she blows that then don’t pick up the pieces again. And by the way you can give my secretary a check for two hundred fifty dollars. Melissa and I choked: poor Karen Minsky paying a seventy-five-dollar premium because Hanaper never read the Book of Esther.

  After we slunk out as fast as we could Melissa said, “I would give up my residency if I thought I could ever dress and move like Luisa Montcrief.” I’d give up my residency if I could find another way to pay my medical school debts, I said, and we all went off to our respective patients.

  Dr. Stonds pounced on me as I was writing up my last orders at the end of the day. What had happened with Mme Montcrief? He and his granddaughter used to enjoy her performances at Lyric Opera, Told him she seemed to be an alcoholic without any medical insurance, so tough love seemed to be the indicated treatment.

  Stonds looked at me bleakly. Tough love is often the best treatment even in the presence of medical insurance, Dr.—Tammuz, is it? As you gain more experience you will be less willing to cry over the manipulators, the users, the abusers in the patient population. You need to develop a thicker skin, or you will be torn apart by your patients’ woes.

  Advice I’ve been hearing since I was five, I think, Mom telling me not to be a crybaby. Develop a thicker skin. Instead, over time, my skin gets sandpapered to translucence.

  6

  Hagar’s House

  YOU SHOULD DO some volunteer work at Hagar’s House,” Mrs. Ephers told Mara one morning at breakfast. “Your heart bleeds over all these homeless women, but you should see what their lives are really like. Drunk, most of them, some from homes as nice as this one. Maybe it would give you more sympathy for their families, or at least stop you heading down the same road they’re on.”

  Mara hunched a shoulder and left the table without answering. As a matter of fact, she had volunteered at the shelter a few times, without telling anyone at Graham Street, but she hated the shelter’s director. The church had approved Patsy Wanachs not only because she spoke some Spanish, but because she was a member of the congregation whom everyone had known since childhood. Patsy shared the obsession with order and decorum that the Orleans Street Church prized, and could be counted on not to let the shelter move from the basement into the pews.

  Mara hated the fact that women had to ask permission to get tampons or seconds at breakfast, or for an extra blanket if they were shivering. The rows of cots, four feet apart, allowed no privacy. Women could put their personal belongings in a locked office for the night, to protect them against theft from their sisters, but then had to come to one of the volunteers, Mara, for instance, to request access to their own possessions. A handful of private lookers could be “earned” by the inmates from points scored by good behavior.

  Mara hated the way Patsy Wanachs looked at the women when they violated one of the shelter’s rules, a secret pleasure in power shining through as she shook her head, made a note: LaBelle, or Caroline, if you become abusive we have to ask you to leave.

  Mephers poured out her grievance to Harriet that evening: I tried to get Mara involved in something outside herself, but I might as well talk to the elevator here. In fact, I’d get more satisfaction out of it—at least the elevator comes when I call for it.

  Harriet was tired. She wanted only to lie down before dinner, when she’d have to play hostess to some of Grandfather’s surgical colleagues, but hearing Mara in the front room, trying to improvise on the piano, she took a breath and went in to talk to her sister. Mara was playing the same triad over and over with her left hand while fumbling with chords in the right.

  Harriet couldn’t understand why Patsy Wanachs’s attitude troubled Mara, “They have to have rules. I know it seems dehumanizing, but in any group of people there are always a handful who would grab everything if we didn’t have some restraints.”

  “Yeah, like your clients.” Mara didn’t look at Harriet, but she did stop fumbling with the keys. “They didn’t get to own banks without stealing from other people.”

  Harriet refused to fight. “That’s why they need me. Someone has to explain the rules to them and keep them out of jail if they’ve gotten too grabby. Well, Patsy is just explaining the rules to these women, so they don’t have to spend the night on the street. It’s a pretty rough job, you know, running an overnight shelter, The church is lucky she’s willing to do it.”

  Mara twisted around on the piano bench to look at her sister. “But it’s the look on her face when she makes a note in that log of hers. Like she’s happy she gets to chew someone out.”

  “I think you’re imagining that, Mara, because you always want to fight anyone with authority.” Harriet spoke gently.

  “And I suppose I’m just imagining that Rafe Lowrie is a sanctimonious hypocrite, too? Well, he’s over there preaching at the women every Wednesday night. Showing them their evil ways. He makes Cynthia go with him and hand out Bibles. He has more money than God, his son Jared is like the biggest most hideous rapist on the Gold Coast—”

  “Mara!” Harriet spoke in her Do-you-have-proof-for-that-allegation? voice.

  “Talk to Tamara Jacoby!” Mara’s skin flushed to a muddy red. “Okay, so she’s sleeping with him, but Cynthia says she’s terrified of him. It’s like the classic battered wife syndrome: Tamara’s paralyzed by him, so she keeps coming back to him. But meanwhile, Cynthia has to live like a nun, and Rafe talks to her in that rasping voice about what her duty to God is. That’s his phony way of saying ‘Do everything exactly like I say.’ It’s the same way he talks to the homeless women. That’s why I hate to go over to Hagar’s House.”

  “He only agreed to run Bible study because of the dissension in the congregation about whether to keep the shelter going at all. You know, when Mrs. Thirkell found out that we had pimps hanging around outside the church gates …”

  Harriet sat on the bench next to her sister and imitated the outraged Mrs. Thirkell. Mara had to giggle.

  The Orleans Street Church had been built in 1893, on land donated by a speculator who thought the wealth that moved across the Chicago River after the famous 1871 fire would spread west as well as north. Right after the fire, Geoffrey Lenore bought up useless chunks of land in what became Irish and German slums, and when he finally admitted his mistake gave three acres of it for the church. Lenore also endowed the massive stone complex, built around an atrium so that his only daughter could have a garden wedding the year the building and grounds were completed. Besides a nave to rival Notre Dame’s, the building included twelve Sunday school classrooms and a giant hall where people could have danced if church rules allowed.

  When parishioners met a century later during the coffee hour, filled with shock and titillation at the sight of women sleeping on the subway grates at Chicago Avenue, they looked over their vast plant. The cellars where coal used to be stored weren’t really used for anything. They could be cleaned out, turned into sleeping quarters, the church could install a kitchen so that women could get a hot meal before leaving in the morning. God clearly intended for them to do this great work. It would be like the early eighties, when they opened the building to El Salvadoran refugees—a very successful program, repaid with becoming gratitude by the various families when they’d been established in permanent homes.

  Of course, without putting it in so many words, the parish council knew the shelter would be kept separate from the church: an outside entrance created on Hill Street where the old coal chutes used to be together with the private kitchen meant that no homeless woman need ever come upstairs to the main buildings.

  Once Hagar’s House was up and running, the reality of their client population dismayed many church members. For one thing, some of the women drank. When parishioners were singing hymns and laughing as they scrubbed the cellars, they had never imagined drunks—they’d pictured clean well-groomed women, down on their luck, humbly grateful to the church for providing them with shelter, praising Jesus and thanking His servants, the Orleans Street Church.

  The p
arish council forbade alcohol within the shelter—it was never allowed on church property, anyway, not even for communion, when the elders served grape juice to the congregation—and they ordered Patsy Wanachs to bar the door to anyone who arrived drunk.

  Even more shocking, some of the women were prostitutes: Patsy Wanachs reported that their pimps came around demanding to see them. The church’s own doorman, faithful old Ronald Hemphill, was slapped one night by one of the pimps demanding entry at the main gate.

  At that point there was a strong movement to shut the shelter altogether. The trouble was, Sylvia Lenore supported Hagar’s House. The great-granddaughter of the original Geoffrey Lenore, Sylvia continued the family presence in the front center pew of the church, served on the parish council, and—as Rafe Lowrie grumbled to the head pastor—had depressingly progressive politics. If she’d had to earn that inheritance herself, Rafe and his cohorts agreed, she wouldn’t be so free in handing it out.

  Pastor Emerson was hard pressed to keep both the Lowrie and Lenore factions in his congregation satisfied. Like many large downtown churches, Orleans Street contained both young fundamentalists, who tended to be social conservatives, along with older members who were more liberal both in doctrine and on social issues.

  Sylvia Lenore, who’d been baptized at Orleans Street fifty-six years ago, had been reared in a progressive tradition: her father marched with Dr. King in Memphis and Marquette Park, her grandmother ran a settlement house out of the church’s Sunday school rooms. Sylvia and Rafe clashed over every issue before the parish, from Hagar’s House to the organ fund.