by Steven Clark
Chandeliers glittered like a giant’s teardrops. When I was a girl watching the Ball on TV, I was thrilled and princessy. Now, I was aware Margot’s life was ending. She rallied tonight, would hopefully have a good Christmas, then …
Margot’s wrinkles broke out into joy. “This is one of my best girls.”
Her hair and complexion were Barbiesque, but her ocean blue eyes had real vivacity. Her gown a shiny moonlit snow, displaying well-rounded shoulders. Margot and she embraced.
“Lee,” said Margot, “this is Kelly Farnum. She’s one of the candidates for queen and one of last year’s ladies-in-waiting.”
“Oh, that’s not such a big deal,” Kelly tossed off. “Mrs. Desouche really puts more into it than it should be. But it’s just so beautiful tonight. You’re Lee?”
“In the flesh.”
Kelly’s eyes lit up. “Mrs. Desouche has said so much about you. I mean, it’s really awesome meeting you. She’s done so much for all of us.”
Margot’s smile was benign. “I just encourage you girls to be the best you can be.”
Kelly beamed at this, letting Margot explain her history. Kelly was one of the Farnums of Ladue and furrowed the social soil of upper crust St. Louis: elementary school at Oak Hill, then Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School, finally graduating from Saint Louis University. Kelly was at the Fleur-de-lis Ball, the coming-out-event for Catholic society, all debs in impeccable white gowns being presented to the Bishop. Kelly had combat experience for the VP Ball. She was a deb in overdrive.
“I mean,” gushed Kelly, “you can’t imagine what a great night this is. I was in, you know, Tanzania building houses for Catholic International, and last month I practically put up one single-handed so I could fly back here.”
I fancied seeing Kelly in gown, gloves and tiara, gleefully hammering together walls for grateful natives. We bid Kelly farewell as she chirped off to her fellow maids, who vanished for the presentation.
Margot’s voice was not easily disregarded in VP circles. She was a queen maker of sorts. As I was introduced to friends, I noticed how people watched from the corner of their eyes. I was the woman quietly whispered about in society.
On one wall, a large white curtain displayed the Veiled Prophet coat of arms. A man next to us turned away from eying the court pages in purple tunics and lots of leg. “Tell me. What does that writing say?”
Saul raised an eyebrow. “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin.” As Margot talked to friends, he leaned closer. “It wouldn’t have killed her kids to have come.”
I shrugged. “She doesn’t need the tension.”
Margot nodded as applause pattered for another maid’s presentation to the court. One of the Kellermans. Of Creve Coeur.
Margot gladly explained the dynastic frictions of St. Louis. What seasonal feuds were in vogue; how the French families still kept their distance from the German families, those nineteenth-century merchant princes like the Stixes, Florsheims, and Pulitzers.
“Jewishness,” Margot explained, “was never held against them. Only that they were in trade. Lord knows we French were in trade when we weren’t grabbing land. The Buschs, on the other hand, with their beer making and Adolphus Busch’s perceived crudities, were never really accepted.” She looked back to the ramp. “I’ve been neglecting our young ladies. Did I miss Kelly?” Margot beamed. “Oh, there she is.”
Kelly was announced, and Margot gave a wise smile to her stately procession to the Veiled Prophet’s throne, his veil thick like a white cloth, helmet shiny brass. She took my hand when Kelly curtsied.
“That was well timed,” she said. “I taught her. It was my bow.”
Saul nodded. “Secrets of the temple.”
After forty more minutes of more pomp and debs, the Queen of the Court of Love and Beauty was proclaimed.
Margot laughed and led the thunder of applause when Kelly’s name was announced, then she was crowned with a feathered tiara. The Prophet and his court quickly exited, and everyone prepared for a dance (the only one of the Ball). Kelly took congratulations, her eyes tearfully joyous. I leaned to Margot.
“Are you going to see Kelly?”
“I’d love to, Lee, but the last thing Kelly wants is an old thing like me going up. She’s queen. It’s her night.” Margot gave a deep groan. I caught her discomfort. “Margot?”
“The pain. It’s been growing all night. Please. We must leave.”
We hustled her into her car and followed her home, arriving back at the mansion in no time, only to be met by a flash of police lights sweeping the front of its entrance. Saul and I frowned as Margot looked through the window, her pain momentarily forgotten.
“Oh my,” she exclaimed.
Saul met Rainer, the security guard for the block, and two cops. Rainer bent to Margot. “Madame. We had an intruder on the grounds. By the grotto.”
The guard, his pudgy frame covered in a cheap, semi-police uniform, wiped his nose. “Yeah. Ma’am. I saw an individual,” he said in security speak, “out in back.”
“I saw him from the window.” Rainer was stern. “You are not well. Come in. All is safe.”
“A description?” asked Saul.
“Slender like a youth,” Rainer said. “Dressed in black.”
“Was he trying to break in?”
“Naw,” the guard shook his head. “I went around and he lit out for the side street over there.” He pointed to the street, slender and dark like a cut of midnight. “We called the cops. They swept the place. Nothing.”
“Thank goodness,” sighed Margot, now coming to the door, my arm around hers. “All of this excitement has taken away my pain.”
For now, I thought.
14
Christmas Drear
The next evening, Saul stared out the window as if the darkened yard would talk to him. He blinked. “I have no idea.”
Margot, nestled on cushions and wearing a sedate maroon pantsuit, nodded. “The burglar wasn’t just here to break in, was he?”
I rested on the sofa. “You think it’s Terri or Pierre?”
Margot sighed. “Of course it is.”
Saul’s eyes reflected the fire crackling in the fireplace. “Why would they break into their own house?”
“Please.” Margot’s voice matched the softness of the drawing room’s ambiance. “You can tell us. It wouldn’t be to … destroy the mansion? Would it?”
He looked up, still hashing things out. “Torch it? No, not their style.”
I shrugged. “Dan Smatters?”
Saul shook his head. “Smatters has no style. Not even arson.”
“Okay. Vess Moot.”
“In the realm of the possible, since a few mysterious conflagrations happened when he needed to hide dirty tricks, but no. The cops said the intruder was on the grounds. Looking for something not connected with the mansion.”
Margot hugged a large cushion, more curious than frightened. “Any other suspects?”
I shifted in the easy chair. “Sonia?”
Saul smiled in that leading man way of protecting the dames. “Let me sniff around.” Our heads turned as the doorbell chimed. More guests to leave gifts and drink cider. Rainer opened the door, and Kelly’s exuberant voice filled the foyer.
“I’m so glad I’m not visiting this year,” Margot fondled her cane, then lay it aside. “The real problem is spacing people apart, so there are no awkward entrances and exits. I’ve not kept up on recent feuds and breakups. I used to have to follow them so religiously.” She gave a kind, wistful look to me. “This fall, I’ve been preoccupied.”
Saul was already on his way out as Kelly entered, wearing a holly red pea coat, brass buttons matching her blonde hair.
“Lee!” she grinned, “what a pleasure!”
She immediately gave Margot a soft peck on the cheek, then slid beside her to offer a present. Both soon lapsed into VP chat. A boyfriend was with her and was politely acknowledged, a law student who smiled, but balanced his time bet
ween looking over the decorations, checking his watch, then he pulled out his cellphone and began dialing.
I helped Saul put on his coat. Margot and Kelly’s laughter was gentle and joyous, like presents being unwrapped. When he left, I meandered to the kitchen. The cook was baking pork chops, and nodded to me as she prepared salads; done in modest deference since I was quasi-family. The kitchen was large, spotless, and had Martha Stewart like copper cookware that was actually used. Rainer stirred a bowl of cider, sprinkling nutmeg on the surface so it collected into a fragrant crust.
I leaned against the counter. “She likes the nutmeg thick?”
He nodded. “I hear her in the night. She moans.”
“She’s in more pain?”
“Do not worry yourself, Mrs. Bridger. Your medicine keeps it down. She murmurs. For Lucas. You. The infant you once were.” He added a plate of linzer tortes to the cider.
“About the intruder. Any ideas?”
“There is much crime.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
I gestured to ask if I could have a torte. Rainer frowned, but gave me a grudging yes. I bit into it, enjoying its soft, buttery taste, the raspberry mild, not sickeningly sweet, as I remembered how they tasted in Vienna. “Very good. One of your recipes?”
He shrugged. “After the war, when I was still in Germany, we used nutmeg to sweeten bark. We made the bark into soup.” Rainer picked up the tray. “I have no answers to who the intruder was. Everyone is a suspect. So many want this place destroyed.”
I followed him into the drawing room where Kelly was showing Margot her pictures from Aruba.
The next day I spent time with my other patients, and then, back at the apartment, flicked on the tree lights and got a rise out of their glowing in the dark, making a mental note to replace the lower bulbs Yul had played with. He nestled in my lap as I yawned, then put on music. Not Christmas stuff, but Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.”
It’s a morbid piece of deep rhythm and chords. Ellington wrote it to prove jazz was more than happy noise, that it could make a statement. Christmas always made me morbid, even though the lights and goodwill were comforting. I recalled how I’d sit and watch them, my lap … now filled with Yul, but once, Jama …
Mom, lookit. The elephants’ll see the lights, and come by here on their way to Siberia.
Mastodons, child. They’re mastodons.
With looong hair. They’re rock star elephants. And tusks. We’ll feed ’em pizza.
Yul nestled in my lap, his purring and warmth lulled me into half-sleep as did the sneering jazz in the background. It was Christmas, and time for ghosts. I smelled someone baking …
Aunt Mary’s Black Forest cakes were a Christmas tradition. What had been a mass of flour and added ingredients had just been baked into a forest of chocolate, cream, and fruit. I fluffed cream while I glanced at pages of Jane Eyre on the counter. I was going through my Bronte phase, blindly insisting Hank Tutweiler, who played forward on our basketball team, was a potential Rochester. My mouth watered at chocolate in the large ceramic bowl Aunt Mary finished stirring … long, thick streaks from rim to base, ready for licking.
She nodded with approval at the naked cake.
“The cream, young lady,” she said in her best Eleanor Roosevelt.
I offered the bowl of whipped cream, loving the way Aunt Mary stroked the chocolate, as if she was conducting, but when she handed me the knife to spread the chocolate, I knew I’d grown. Just the month before, I got my training bra; I was looking for a Rochester, and now chocolate. But I was sad as I carefully began to spread it on the cake.
“I don’t think Mom loved me.”
“Not so thick,” Aunt Mary said. “Stroke lightly. Lawrence Welk, not Toscanini.”
I smiled, and waved the knife like a champagne music maker.
“Where did this come from?” Aunt Mary asked.
“I was just thinking. About Mom. You know … her card.”
“Well, a card’s all you’ll get from her, kiddo.”
I swallowed as Aunt Mary put the chocolate bowl in the sink. All that stray chocolate in thick circles ready to be immersed in dishwater. I wanted to cry out No!, But knew I was getting too old to lick the bowl. The training bra said as much. I returned to the second layer of my melancholy; like the cake, only no chocolate.
“She didn’t love me. Not like Dad did.”
Aunt Mary slowly stirred cherries, thick in a sweet-smelling sauce, to be placed on top.
“Why the questions? You don’t miss her, do you? She’s given you no tit for tat. With her, your tat is wasted.”
“Dad loved me.”
“Of course he did, and you’re missing a spot. Spud’ll inspect the damned thing like it was one of his mines. He’ll see that bald spot, and I’ll never hear the end of it. When a man gets to his age, cake is their sex.”
I smiled as I spread a fig leaf of chocolate over the spot. “I can’t talk to you about it.”
Aunt Mary glanced at Jane Eyre. “You think I’m Mrs. Reed? The meanie?”
The embarrassment made me look away. “No.”
“You surely don’t think I’m the crazy wife, do you?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not about you. It’s about me.”
The cherries were spooned on top. On the wall, the clock’s minute hand was making a V to the hour. Spud would soon pull up, enter, see the bowl, and there would go the chocolate. Aunt Mary patted the seat of a chair. “Sit.”
I sat.
“Cindy Lee,” she began, “I’m not big on love. We know that. On hugs and kisses and all the sloppy stuff.” She lowered her voice and stroked my hair. “You mean a lot to me and Spud. It’s fun getting a kid you don’t have to toilet train. Spud and I did okay before you popped in, but you gave us something new. He and I are a couple of poops stuck in this burg, and it’s good to have a cell mate.” She grabbed the dish rag and wiped her hands. “Your father loved you. You’re a lot like him, you know. Ike asked questions. He wanted things, things this dump couldn’t give him.” Aunt Mary smiled. “He liked chocolate. I’ve seen your eyes wander to the bowl.”
“Can I lick it? I mean, if I’m not too old?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I started to reach in, but she cleared her throat. I had to use a spoon. “I’m kinda afraid, sometimes. That …”
“That?”
“I won’t be loved.”
“But you will be, Cindy Lee. You’re the bee’s knees. You’re smart, great looking, and believe me, boys will line up to be with you, although I hope you get over Hank Tutweiler. I mean, his lay-ups are the envy of the world, but he’s paperback. I want you to find someone hardcover.”
I looked at the cake. “He reminds me … of Rochester.”
Aunt Mary’s laughter rolled like a wave. “God, to me, he’s Howdy-Doody.”
My grin widened. Hank did have red hair and a mild smattering of freckles, and off the court, his hand gestures implied strings from above.
“Aunt Mary,” I sighed, “I don’t miss Mom. Not really. I just want someone to … am I gonna—”
“Going to,” she said quietly.
“Have children?”
“Sure, cutie pie. You’ll marry. You’re too pretty not to. You’ll have kids who adore you, ones who won’t be asking questions caused by the flaws of a certain nameless someone we know.”
I was reassured and almost ashamed of my blues. Outside, tires crunched on the gravel. My spoon scraped the last of the chocolate into a thick helping when the door opened and Spud tramped in.
“Another day in the salt mines,” he wheezed. “Hey, we baking a cake?”
A sidelong glance from Mary as she replaced the spices in the cabinet. “We knew you were coming.”
Spud looked at the bowl, saw me licking away, and sighed at chocolate denied. I was happy. I came. I saw. I licked.
I woke as the tree rustled. Yul knocked down another bulb. I blinked as I reached
for the cellphone, cursing myself as I punched out the overseas number, checking the clock and sighing over the six hour time difference. It rang. I wanted to hang up, but it was too late.
“Hello? Pierce?”
Pierce’s voice was coated with semi-awake. “Mom?”
“Hello, kiddo. Sorry I woke you.”
“You didn’t.” A yawn gave that the lie. “Antje and I were up. Having wild sex.”
“In her fifth month? I don’t believe that.”
“No, really.” Pierce called in the background. “Aren’t we having wild sex?”
“Ahhh. Ohhh. Ummm.”
I laughed at Antje’s theatrics. “That’s very good. How are you?”
“I am good, Mutti Bridger.”
My nickname makes me feel like a roadshow version of Mother Courage. I immediately felt guilty waking them up. “Look, Pierce, sorry I’m being the annoying mother.”
“Surprised you’re not with Saul.”
“Not tonight.”
“How’s—”
“Stop that!” I commanded.
“What, Mom? Us having sex?”
“No. Yul. He’s knocking down another bulb.”
“Oh. Hey there, Yul.”
Yul yowled back. Pierce’s voice relaxed me, and I scrunched on the chair. “I’m bushed.”
“Sure,” Pierce said, “with Christmas, the mansion, and all that.”
I emailed Pierce weekly, so he was up on L’Affaire Desouche. “Oh, kiddo, what am I going to do about this?”
“Just take the money.”
“Not that easy.” Our pause lengthened. God, I felt bad waking him, but I had to hear Pierce’s voice. Then I sighed. “Have you seen Jama?”
“Not since two months ago. She was in Babelsburg on some kind of gig. Also pitching the elephant movie. We had lunch, and she was on her way.”
Babelsburg is Germany’s Hollywood. I gripped the chair and might have twisted the phone cord, but modern technology saved me from that former tension-reducing habit. “She’s … okay?”
“She’s Jama.” That was all the shorthand needed. “Mom, you sound kind of down. You okay?”
