The Saint Louisans

by Steven Clark

  “Wow,” she said. So what was here?”

  Saul looked to me. “What did she say?”

  I cocked my head. “Who?”

  “You know. Sara.” He turned back to the journalist. “This is Lee, by the way.”

  “Oh.” The girl turned her cellphone on me. “You his girlfriend?”

  “I squeeze back.”

  We all laughed, and I continued. “He means Sara Teasdale, one of St. Louis’s best poets. She wrote about the old riverfront.”

  Saul and I often lounged before his fireplace and studied black and white photos of the levee, many grainy and unfocused like a myopic’s squint, a collection of buildings with architectural gangrene. I spoke slowly, recalling what I knew by heart:

  And old warehouses poured their purple shadows

  Across the levee.

  High over them the black train swept with thunder,

  Cleaving the city, leaving far behind it.

  Wharf boats moored beside the old side-wheelers

  Resting in twilight.

  “Wow,” the girl exclaimed, “that’s pretty cool. You a poet?”

  “I’m a nurse. I read a lot.”

  “She’s a brilliant nurse,” Saul said with quiet pride. “Every time I see her, I can’t wait to get sick.” He returned to his serious, being-interviewed pose, a thoughtful, darkly handsome Heathcliff under the Arch. “All of this space could have been redefined and restored. We’re the only people in the world who assassinate our history. It’s like Cahokia.”

  The girl nodded. “That was like you talked about last month, right? At the Native American teach-in. That old place in Illinois?”

  “Yeah,” Saul said. “Cahokia. The first city in North America. By 1100, it had fifteen thousand people. About as many as London. Then, two hundred years later it was abandoned.” He looked off across the river, an excellent profile worthy of a coin.

  “It just vanished. They walked away from it. Like we walked away from the riverfront.” He gave a Carl Sagan thoughtful pause. “Like we throw away our past.”

  She was jubilant. “This is great stuff, Mr. Lowenstein. I have to meet someone in Soulard, then we should have this online next week.”

  “Sure,” Saul laughed, “hope my hate mail increases. It only makes me stronger.”

  “Hey, it’ll get a ton of responses.” She shouldered her bag. “You won’t believe the number of people who think you’re a real commie asshole.”

  Saul’s gentle smile acknowledged this as a compliment. “What did they say in Henry Fool: ‘an honest man is always in trouble.’ That goes double for us commie assholes.”

  The girl strode off, cellphone already to her ear, like people do these days, ending real talk for telephonic as fast as possible. Saul took my hand.

  “This is where you say, ‘Kiss me, you fool.’”

  “Fool is optional.”

  We snuggled like Robert Doisneau lovers. A long kiss, breaking apart as a barge headed past the oil refinery to the South curve; like a tear dropping off the eye.

  “Thanks for the timely arrival, and the quote. I knew I could count on you to deliver a Sara for me.” Saul’s tone softened. “You met Margot?”

  “Yes,” I replied as we strolled. “I’m certainly intrigued by her, but there’s something strange about our meeting. It was as though she was probing me. Like I was being examined. She seemed very interested in my life.”

  “Come on,” Saul shrugged. “You’re amazingly fascinating.”

  “That’ll get you sex tonight, but it’s the way she looked at me. How did she know about me? Apart from your no doubt effusive recommendations?”

  “Okay, I built you up. She did know you by name. I assume word got around.”

  Saul stared at the cathedral, built in 1834, a prim box of neoclassical piety because the Church here couldn’t afford the usual Catholic architectural oomph. In old St. Louis, the St. Louis of the levee, it nestled in a crowded street, but now on the open plain of the Arch, the cathedral was a prairie church, looking like a prop in a John Ford movie.

  “Look,” he said, “she’s a very decent, a kind and thoughtful woman. She wants to save the mansion while those kids can’t wait to gut it.”

  “That’s kind of strong.”

  “It’s true. Margot is a real treasure, and they’re jerks. I’ve been over to the mansion a dozen times.”

  “Ah,” I raised an eyebrow, “I only thought it was a half-dozen. Do we have Sunset Boulevard here?”

  Saul took my hands. “Hey. I’m not chasing after the old lady. She needs you, and she’s worried about the mansion.”

  “I know she and the kids haven’t mended fences yet. Has she talked to you about them?”

  “Only in mild off-the-cuff remarks. She never talks about Lucas. Terri? Hatred.”

  “I saw her picture when I left. Veiled Prophet rig and all. She was really upset about the Ball in 1972.”

  “Ah,” Saul smiled, “it was that night.”

  “Yeah, when everything went crazy.”

  Saul laughed. “Some woman broke in. From ACTION.”

  “Action?” I frowned at the acronym. “So long ago. What did it stand for?”

  “Action Community To Improve Opportunities for Negroes.’” Saul smiled.

  “Wow. ‘Negroes.’ Sounds quaint. Like ‘corset’ or ‘self-abuse.’

  Another crash of musketry. Crows cawed overhead and flew under the Arch.

  “Yeah,” Saul said, “the woman slid down a cable and plopped right into the court of love and beauty. Sort of like old money and the revolution meeting Errol Flynn. A real Indiana Jane.” He started humming the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark. “I don’t think she wore a cape. She should have worn a cape. How many chances do you get to wear a cape?”

  “I wear a cape.”

  “Yours is a real one. Nurses are real. What did Marx say? ‘History repeated is farce.’ When you slide down to unmask a veiled guy at a deb ball, history becomes Mel Brooks.” He settled down into his serious mode. “I’m glad you saw Margot. I’m sure she’ll feel confident with your help. So she can take on the kids.”

  “Remember, I’m there to help her die. I’m keeping out of the mansion thing.”

  A square of paper spiraled down to us. We first thought it a scrap of kite, but it was another handbill. JUNETEENTH TOWNE! HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE!

  Saul snatched the handbill and balled it up. “Funny how this follows me around.” He told me if built as planned, Junteenth Towne, would gut the Desouche mansion in as thorough a manner as the poor Rock House. He led me to the car and said, “Let’s have something to snack on. Sweet, crusty, and warm. Then I’ve got to check how the restoration work’s going so we can start rewiring, and”—he rolled his eyes—“that urban planning conference in Lawrence next week.”

  “Sure.”

  “What about you?”

  “I feel like a walk. Tower Grove.”

  Saul stretched his arms, as if making his own Gateway Arch. “Great day for a walk. Kick a monkey brain for me and wave to the wedding guests.”

  I nodded. Another crack of musket fire. Kites swooped above us like blue jays when you get too close to their nests.

  Next door to Tower Grove Park is Shaw’s garden, or, in its Sunday best, The Missouri Botanical Garden. Henry Shaw’s elaborate Italian villa lies within, its plebeian brick covered in white stucco offsetting all the greenery around it like a castle in the woods of someone’s fairy tale. The villa’s square tower is charming, but unlike Montaigne in his tower, Henry would sit inside and scan the grounds with spyglass to his eye, making sure the staff weren’t slacking off.

  He was a man whose gentle expression had a Wizard of Oz benevolence writ all over it. Henry was charming, altruistic, and had at least two paternity suits brought against him. He was a wizard who got around. To the side of the villa is his mausoleum, a dignified cupola whose stained glass trim glows like a kaleidoscope when the sun hits it. Henry’s statue sleeps, bla
nket tucked up to his chest, taking an eternal nap.

  In the old days of my childhood, on the Saturday after the Veiled Prophet ball the reigning queen would sit in the upholstered and brocaded Victorian elegance of Henry’s parlor and hold court for the children of St. Louis, offering a bit of a magic kingdom that predated Disney.

  In Margot’s drawing room, I recalled a photo on her table of her at this ceremony in single plumed tiara, a cream-colored gown at one with the stucco, happily entertaining a gaggle of kiddos.

  So, Tower Grove has a bit of fey and magic within its long green box. I like to think its rubbed off on me, salving my soul as I walk through it. In a strange way, she and I are connected in this park and that make believe kingdom. It was a mite troubling.

  Tower Grove Park, 285 acres of varied trees, gazebos and landscaped vistas, has long been my sanctuary. Modeled on Kew Gardens by its creator, Henry Shaw, the park replaced the old Prairie de Noyers, reminding us, despite St. Louis’s French origins and Midwestern cocoon, there is a dash of England in her toilet.

  The early autumn air was fresh as I strolled by the Turkish pavilion, whose roof resembled a red and white pointed turban. Flecking orange leaves mixed with green as I recalled Harry Burke’s words from 1923, that the park was a spinster, “Reclusive, almost, in her sheltered home, freed from the anxieties of toil … keeping herself unspotted, though with the perfume of other days about her”.

  Other days, indeed. Past rows of brick flats that box the park, I remembered when I lived two blocks away. I became a ‘Southie’ because the southside always had affordable flats, and with two children in tow, I couldn’t be choosy. Chez Bridger was a Queen Anne style flat with arched front windows and a modified tower … just the thing for the Veiled Prophet Queen inside me. Its front had a broken frieze where the second floor windows notched into it. Saul explained this is a style unique to St. Louis.

  The neighborhood was a mix of aging folk with echt German names like Putzelmacher or Kleindorfer as well as the usual grab bag of Hoosiers, St. Louis patois for white trash. The Germans carefully trimmed and hedged their postage-stamp-sized front yards with scissors-like precision. Hoosiers used theirs as a dumping grounds for auto parts and motorcycles in various stages of disrepair.

  I’d take Jama and Pierce to Tower Grove, thankful the kids had a green space to romp in. We’d run, play tag, roll in leaves, snowball each other. I used the park as a first date for my lovers, to give them a test spin in its groves and gazebos. It was by the Druid circle of oaks that Saul and I clicked. Where the Gateway Arch is a space to be filled with the city’s sense of being an historical passage, Tower Grove is more like a grandfather clock, ticking away memories.

  For a moment, I lost myself in the bird’s chirping and jingling tags as a dog trots with his owner slow jogging in spandex and Nikes. I strolled past a row of ginkgoes. Their sickly sweet odored fruit was in full harvest, looking like drops of puckered flesh. I find its rancid odor attractive, a sweet and sour pork of the floral world. The fan-like leaves a pleasant mixture of bright green and pliant yellow.

  A soft clunk came to my right. It was one of the Osage Orange tree’s fist-sized fruit we call monkey brains. Pierce liked to play brain surgeon with them while Jama would smash them against a tree. All too prophetic of their futures.

  I walked past the lake and grotto, a series of limestone blocks taken from the Lindell Hotel, a fashionable spot that burned down in 1868. As ducks glided back and forth, a wedding party readied themselves for photos capturing post-nuptial exuberance. It’s a hotspot for wedding photos, as I told Doc Pickwick while we watched almost from the same location.

  I sighed. Doc. He’s still here, always will be here. Somewhere at a nearby ball field, cheers signaled an eighth-inning upset. Eventually, I headed back to my car, studying the pyracantha bushes near the grotto, blazing pumpkin orange against still green trees. The colors of autumn in Tower Grove. When it was a shoulder to cry on. Playing catch with Pierce, watching his reading change from Dr. Seuss to Salinger. My hopes for Jama. I’d wonder how Dad would have liked the park, what it would be like seeing him age instead of recalling his frozen youth, forever tied to a cockpit.

  Walks upon walks taken, observing white blossoms at spring to snow-filled treks at sunset when weakened brass hit the pond, making it shine like melted gold.

  It had been during a long walk in Tower Grove Park that I’d decided my marriage to Sky was finis and I told him to leave. That night. Now, strangely, along with the memories and faces of my family, I thought of Margot. There was something about her that was unlike my other terminal patients. She wanted something from me. But what?

  A flush of leaves drifted down; orange, red, and yellow like shards of stained glass. With the sun’s decline, colors turn to mud; the color of the Mississippi.

  5

  Losing One’s Marbles

  It had been a busy morning checking my other patients, a circuit from nursing homes and hospitals. The mansion’s pleasant, light-draped interior relaxed me. I wanted to linger in the foyer because every view was splendid, and I especially wanted to study the marble bust of a Grecian maiden whose style reminded me of Saint-Gaudens. Margot and Saul’s quiet conversation stopped when I entered. On the table, a silver tea service waited with hot Darjeeling and scones.

  “Lee,” Margot said with a smile, “your fella has been trying to seduce me.”

  “I’ll warn you,” I said as I slid into the velvet brocaded armchair, “he has his eyes on your marble.”

  Saul laughed. “I was on my way out. I just wanted to remind Margot this Juneteenth Towne hasn’t a chance.”

  “He’s my knight,” purred Margot. Saul’s eyes wandered around the room like a kid in a candy shop.

  Juneteenth Towne was named for June 19th, 1865, when blacks were freed from slavery. Vess Moot named this massive public works project, and he claimed he would redevelop the blighted and black north side. As Gaul was divided into three parts, so is St. Louis: the north, south, and west. Every so often, a plan is brought forth to save the north. The plan, every plan, stumbles. But if it didn’t stumble, if it was built according to plan, Juneteenth Towne would demolish the Desouche mansion.

  “I don’t understand,” said Margot, “why that place has to be on these grounds?”

  Saul shrugged. “Ask Vess. It’s his nightmare.”

  “I’m certain Pierre put him up to it,” Margot soured, recalling her son. “He wants to destroy me.”

  Saul and I exchanged glances at this hint of the family feud. He leaned forward.

  “Don’t worry. We’re not going to let that happen.” He rose. “Sorry to run, but they need me in the county. Another zoning demon to fight.”

  Saul and I touched hands, and after he left, I got to work taking Margot’s vital signs. She exhaled.

  “I can’t tell you what a comfort Saul has been,” she said. “When are you two getting married?”

  “It’s up in the air.” I heard her heartbeat through the stethoscope. “Is there any pain? Restlessness?”

  “I do toss a bit. Woke up three times in the night.”

  “I’ll have Doctor Kemper recommend some over-the-counter stuff.” She nodded her thanks. “Cough,” I said. She did, and then as I recorded her vitals in her file, she poured me a cup of tea, the steam matching light-filled drapes by the open windows. It was mid-afternoon. Only the swish of the gardener’s raking broke the stillness. Her eyes flashed.

  “The history isn’t that dramatic. After all, my family, the Rigauche, like the Desouches, were just tradesmen haggling over furs. In colonial St. Louis, even the Chouteaus went barefoot in summer.”

  I enjoyed the sunlight dappling through a window, the quiet afternoon. Margot buttered a scone. “You enjoy peace, don’t you, Lee? Like me. I insist the gardener not use one of those leaf blowers. Raking is more …”

  “Peaceful.”

  “Historical, it seems. This is how I want to remember things. Peace and quiet. You
and me.”

  Again, Margot’s mysterious need for me. I sensed hesitation in her soft face, as though she were afraid she’d given something away. Margot reached for a box.

  “I want to show you something. It was fished out of one of the family chests. Rainer was most helpful.”

  I caught a glance of Rainer. His expression was anything but.

  Margot placed a small metal cup on the table. It was three inches high, lacking a handle and luster. My fingers rubbed its rough body. “An antimonial cup. A family heirloom?”

  Margot’s smile was wide. “Of course you’d know all about it. Been in the family for ages. We brought it from Quebec. Before the family turned to fur, they were apothecaries. It was said people came to our door to use the cup.”

  Antimony was held to be a magical element, thought by physicians in older days to have semi-magical powers. When John Winthrop sailed to found Massachusetts, he had an antimonial cup packed in his medicine chest next to powder said to be made from a unicorn’s horn.

  “The cup,” I said, “was a kind of placebo. It was said antimonial cups had nineteen cures.”

  Margot leaned back. “Any good for cancer?”

  I nodded and smiled, turning the cup in my fingers. “Especially when used with toads. One cure had you cut a toad in half and apply it to the cancer thrice a week.”

  Acorns dropped in the yard. Margot looked away. “If it were only that simple.”

  I set the cup down. “Have you thought of chemo?”

  “Pancreatic is incurable.”

  “The odds are high, but people win. If you fight back, it buys time.”

  Margot shuddered. “No, I saw what it did to Mama. Chemo is horrible. I’m not afraid to die.”

  Sirens screamed down Grand Avenue, then receded. “Do you want to die?”

  “I’ve led a full life, Lee. When you’re older, you become resigned to things; you want to make things right …”

  She stopped. I stared. Rainer advanced, but her eyes warned him off. Margot sighed away what I assumed was a heartfelt plea, and returned to a gentle formality. “Dr. Kemper said I have until spring. Is he right?”