The Saint Louisans

by Steven Clark

  I heard both of them yawn. “Sure. I just wanted to touch bases Look, I’ll let you get back to the sex. Keep in touch.”

  “Sure, Mom. Hey, Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas. Antje?”

  “Yes, Mutti Bridger. Frohe Weihnacht.”

  I hung up, feeling embarrassed and needing a drink. Thinking … mulling, obsessing … on Jama.

  It’s called Weihnacht because to Germans wehe means woe … as in conception, as in the pain baby Jesus caused Mary … virgin birth notwithstanding, delivery is a pain. Jama is, was, a pain.

  I needed two glasses of wine to get her out of my system.

  I pulled my collar closer, enjoying the warmth of my wool greatcoat. Unlike New York, St. Louis isn’t a coat city. St. Louisans don’t walk. We drive, so we do jackets. But Saul and I walk. The wool and my felt hat gave me a much needed thick and fuzzy third skin.

  Christmas time downtown where the sky is bleak concrete, and wind tunnels flick face and heels like arctic whips as they swirl up lonely canyons of memories. Those crowded sidewalks of shoppers from my childhood gone.

  “You’re depressed.”

  “I’m mulling.”

  “Jama, huh?”

  ‘Tis the season to mull.”

  We passed the old Arcade, windows grayed over like cataracts, the roof squared with spires. Art Deco’s take on the medieval. I sighed. “Brought the kids there.”

  “Yeah,” Saul said bitterly, “it can be revamped. I submitted my plans.”

  His tone indicated it hadn’t gone well. It never does. The Planning Board and Saul are at war with each other. Architecture is his security blanket when he’s mulling. We walked in silence a while. He pulled the brim of his hat lower. “Why would someone be on the grounds?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sonia,” he almost hissed. “I’ve got a feeling she’s involved, but she has no interest in the mansion.”

  “Look,” I said, “what about Rainer? He seemed very evasive.”

  “He always is, but …” Another kingly shake of the head. “Yeah, got to think about him, too.”

  Long shadows from the building made me shiver. Seeing in them huge bodies. Trunks. Legs. Seeing the elephant. Mastodons.

  An’ their trunks, Mom! they’re HUGE an’ reach to the sky. Tusks like, like roller coasters. Why do they hafta go to Siberia? They’re so DUMB.

  We came to Macy’s. It used to be the old Famous-Barr department store, but Famous was torpedoed in a round of corporate buyouts, ghosting another childhood memory. Macy’s red star glowed as if Red Square tried to spring up on Olive Street. Dismal skies compounded this Slavic gloom.

  Inside, we bought gifts sold by indifferent clerks. Business was slow. The perfume and candy counter had their usual comforting smells. Poor Saul. His ex-wife Abby was into perfume. He bought her a bottle of Charley one year. A month later she threw it at him.

  Outside, toting presents, we walked to the car and passed the Mark Twain Hotel. Its eight-storied terra cotta facade is a firm yellow tooth in the mouth of urban decay, one of the few pockets of human color downtown. The lodgers are a nest of down-and-out disability folk and janitors, bartenders …

  “Shit,” I said.

  “We parked too far away. Just one more block.”

  “At this time of the year, I feel like Anna Karenina looking for a train.”

  “Stop blaming yourself for Jama.”

  We passed holiday banners on the light poles, some tattered and waving wildly, as if they’d been through a barrage. Amongst the holiday red and green was a blue and white fleur-de-lis. Well, this is St. Louis. At Saul’s car, we unloaded presents in the trunk, then hopped in.

  “It’s the Christmas thing. It just comes. It’s my Christmas ghost story. I’m seeing the elephant.”

  “Seeing the what?”

  “You know,” I shrugged. “A phrase from Gold Rush days. Miners went to California ‘to see the elephant.’ In the Civil War, soldiers used it to describe going into battle.” I was gloomy. “How wonderful. My mulling is becoming the History Channel. I need to get tanked.”

  “Can do,” smiled Saul, “The tanked channel. Don’t have to subscribe to cable.”

  We drove back to the Central West End, passing the Cathedral; lights under its dome the amber glow of evening mass.

  The bar enveloped us in warmth as we threaded our way in past a crush of local Fezziwigs. The woman tending bar had décolletage to die for, blonde hair imported from Malibu, and a Santa hat that jingled with each draw from the tap. By a miracle akin to finding a room in the stable with double beds of hay, a booth had just been cleared off, and we scooted in. The windows were frosting. Thick clouds seemed to dip to the rooftops. Snow was ready to de-womb.

  I ordered a hot buttered rum, then a second. Saul ordered Beaujolais.

  I sipped, then bit off some of the garlic bread. “Maybe Jama’s my fault.”

  “Nonsense, Lee. You’re a great mom. Look how Pierce turned out.”

  “Pierce raised himself. When he was born, he came with batteries.”

  After the second rum, I had a whiskey sour. “I’m getting seriously pissed tonight,”

  “‘Pissed,’” Saul observed. “An Anglicism. A Doc word.”

  “You know, Doc took me to Mexico one Christmas. To see the pyramids at Teotihuacan. We climbed them. The pyramid of the Sun and of the Moon. Two. Just like Cahokia.” I closed my eyes, recalling beautiful, mild Mexico in December compared to dreary St. Louis. “He was fascinated that it was so much like Cahokia. A lost civilization just abandoned, and …” I stopped and looked at Saul’s deep, absorbing eyes. Listening. The man knows how to listen. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Damned shame what happened to him.” He sipped. “They never found the killers?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t mean to carry on.”

  “Sure you do. Doc was a good guy. It might have worked out.” He took my hand. “We can work out, Lee. Of course, all I have is a nutty ex-wife. She’s far away, but she’s got me on speed dial. Look, Lee, if it’s about my family …”

  “No, no. It wasn’t that bad. Your father was polite.”

  “Yeah, his politeness could make Frosty the Snowman wish for a parka in July. He was rude.” I frowned at Saul’s dislike of his father inviting me for dinner. It had been over two years ago. “It’s not because I’m—”

  “It is. He doesn’t like shiksas.”

  “Look, honey, I don’t think it’s that. I really didn’t get that feeling. The real problem is that he’s a doctor, and I’m a nurse. He’s old school where nurses are nothing more than hired help.”

  The Fezziwigs had taken over the piano, and an off-key chorus of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” swayed and teetered in the close air. I loved the heat, music, holiday cheer, both natural and malted, and Saul across the table. Mr. Heroic, my idealistic, gallant knight in shining armor, getting tanked with me.

  “To be honest,” I looked across the table at him, “I think I’m coming around to marriage.”

  “All of this happiness,” he observed indulgently, waving a hand at the crowd and the decorations, “Jesus. Shepherds, wise men. The angels. You can never go wrong with angels.”

  “Angels rule.” Our glasses clicked.

  “You goys got all the good ones. ‘Jingle Bells.’ ‘Silent Night.’ ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.’ What have we got? ‘Oy Chanakah, Oy Chanakah, a Yontiff a Shayner.’” He sighed. “We got holiday envy. I’m happy, Lee. With you. Right now, I need mistletoe, not a dreidel.”

  He leaned across the table and kissed me, full on, my King Saul turning David, he of the melodious harp. A boothful of nerds erupted to our right. They rolled their eyes, leered, declaimed and cackled, but not to worry. They were only doing Vincent Price imitations. The local art house cinema just did a retrospective on our native son turned ham. The imitations were bad, which is to say good.

  “We should get going,” I said. We
pulled on our coats and wove our way between the tables. Outside among the decorations at the corner was a bust of Tennessee Williams. Tom looked at us, cigarette in hand, a mildly quizzical expression caught in black bronze. He knew all about crappy kin, our patron saint of mendacity. Before my drunkenness made me meditate too deeply into poor Tom’s blank eyes, Saul’s cell phone purred. He opened its jaws, listened, then snapped it shut. I caught Saul’s creased forehead.

  “Abby?”

  His hand waved in resignation, like a cab missed. “Probably at a party. Like last year. Knocked over a chair. Crying and waving her arms. Lee … I’ve got to talk to her. This shit—”

  When I touched his chest, the tension was tight. “Sure. Call me later.”

  “The hell with that. She can wait. I’ll get you home.”

  It was only a few blocks once we crossed Lindell, the heater in Saul’s car barely defrosted the windows. We passed street lamps with red bows wrapped around their metal throats, as if they’d been invited to dinner.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “All of this … fecal matter around me. Margot’s going to start sinking in January. I’m hated by my new-found half-siblings—

  “Dangerous half-siblings,” he interjected.

  “And Margot wants a fairy tale daughter who’ll call her ‘Mom.’ I can’t do that, Saul. Not in the way she wants.” I sighed. “All this holiday schmerz goes back to Jama. I wanted a good daughter. A female who’d set the world on fire.”

  “Just like anarchists. Well, be careful what you wish for.”

  “Yeah,” I sunk back into the seat. “I wanted Florence Nightingale, and what did I get? Moll Flanders.” Saul approached my apartment complex, its lights and decorations Norman Rockwell simple. “Jama. Journal of the American Medical Association. She’d go to med school. Be a better me. An Aunt Mary me. Instead, she’s a Hollywood camp follower whose resume skills include gate-crashing and scamming.”

  “Yeah,” Saul said thoughtfully. “Perfect credentials for a future in politics. And she does like elephants. The GOP needs her. The Ayn Rand they secretly crave.” He parked the car. “It’s Bangkok. That’s what’s bothering you?”

  I nodded, recalling the night of the rupture. Another jolly Christmas memory.

  Jama had been missing a week. I’d been frantic, or finally worked my way into franticness. I’d even called Sky, who, dutiful ex that he was, came back from an out-of-town rut with a new girlfriend to search for his kid. Then the phone rang. Pierce got it, and I heaved with relief when he spoke to Jama. From the airport.

  The shit had really hit the fan when the door slammed outside as the cab drove off. Moments later, Jama had breezed in, travel bag over her shoulder, a batik scarf around her neck like a flag of defiance.

  “Hey, Pierce.” She dumped the bag and went for a tray of Christmas cookies. Not a word of hello to me, her mother, standing right there, shoveling cookies hot out of the oven onto the tray.

  “Hey,” Pierce was cordial, but ready to duck when the shrapnel starting flying.

  Jama bit into a cookie. “Cinnamon.” She crunched and licked her lips.

  “Where have you been?” I tried to say it without exploding.

  “I was with Shana. We flew to L.A., and were going to bum around the beaches and the strip, but I got this idea. I wanted to see elephants, and—”

  I almost grit my teeth at the memory. “You didn’t go to Bangkok.”

  “—I mean, there’s this place. They’ve got this Emerald Buddha, and steeples or something all over, like golden needles. Everywhere.” She reached for a raspberry filled cookie. “Wow, these raspberry ones rock. Anyway, it’s called Wat Phra Kaew. I think.” Jama giggled. “Whole language is like that. Weird. And they have the coolest elephants—”

  Before Jama could scarf another cookie, I grabbed the tray from the counter and set it with a thud on the stove. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Answer me. Are you making this up?”

  Her lips pursed, her eyes grew steely, and I could almost see the horns emerging from the top of her head. “You think I’m lying, huh? Well, we went there. Took off from Honolulu—”

  “You went to Hawaii?”

  “Well, duh. It’s on the way. We didn’t go to Cleveland. Then we had a layover in Hong Kong, and crashed at the Oriental Hotel. I mean, it’s on the river.” Jama tossed a wad of ticket receipts on the counter where they tumbled in disarray, several falling at my feet. Pierce picked them up and raised his eyebrows.

  “Wow,” he muttered.

  Jama turned to Pierce. “You would not believe what it’s like. I mean, Shana and I got the coolest sarongs, and at the pool—”

  I trembled, my clenched fists were white. “How?” I managed to say through clenched teeth. “You need passports. Money.”

  Jama shrugged and propped her feet on the couch. “In L.A., we crashed this party and we were nine feet away from Chevy Chase. He’s a cool dude, even if he’s tall. He doesn’t look tall on the screen. So we met this guy at the bar who does passports. All kinds of stuff for the stars. We got two of ’em made.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No,” she smiled, “just expensive.”

  I flung up my hands. “I don’t even know where to start. You fly to Bangkok while I’ve been out of my freaking mind, thinking you were kidnapped. Or dead. And you—”

  The door opened. Sky entered and frowned. “Hey, kid. Where the hell you been?”

  “She’s been in Bangkok,” I said, “with forged passports. Young lady, where did you get the money?”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Sky, scowling down at her. “No. You been holed up somewhere.”

  Jama defiantly reached into her bag and spread a handful of photos on the coffee table like a royal flush. “Here. Me and Shana. By the Wat you knew. There. On the elephant we rode. It was an elephant taxi. See?

  Pierce shuffled the photos like they were a dead man’s hand. “Yeah. Cool.”

  Sky rubbed his neck, a sign he was angry but trying not to lose it. “Jesus Christ, kid. How the hell—”

  I closed in. “Where did you get the money. Are you dealing?”

  Jama folded her arms. “No, Mom. I’m not a junkie. Not a pusher. Sorry to disappoint you. I just wanted to see some elephants.”

  Sky guffed at the photos. “We got a zoo for that.”

  “Yeah, Dad, but those are African elephants. Thai elephants are really neat. They’re so laid back. We saw monks in orange robes. I mean, they were like Sunkist oranges that go to church. See this snap? That elephant’s trunk got a banana out of my purse. I mean, they are so—”

  I went face to face with Jama. “Can it right now, Jama. You stole from me. Again.”

  “I’ll pay you back. Hey, you can cut my allowance—”

  “How much?” I was near a heavy boil as she looked away. “How much?”

  Pierce nudged Jama. She shrugged. “Just a couple of thousand. I mean, we got a super bargain fare, and at the hotel, I used the credit card, and in Thailand, you eat real cheap, and it’s all so boss—”

  “My money, Jama. You stole from me again. What credit card?”

  “The guy at the bar made one for us.” She rose. “Look, I’m tired, okay? We’ll talk about it when you’ve cooled down.”

  As Jama walked past me, I grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t you walk away from me. You stole from me! You used a forged passport, a forged credit card!”

  She pulled away. “So what? So fucking what?”

  “Hey,” Sky stepped forward, “you don’t talk to your mother like that.”

  “Oh sure, Dad. That’s for you, huh? I need a rest. From my parents.”

  I pointed to the stairs. “Go to your room. You’re grounded. Forever.”

  Jama smirked. “You aren’t going to ground me. I just wanted to get out of this stupid city. Hey, I could have lied. Shana wanted to spend another day, but I said no way, we gotta get home.” She said this as if she was arguing her case in front of a judg
e.

  “Go to your room.”

  Jama threw her bag at the wall. “Screw you!.” She zipped to the back door and was out into the alley.

  “Jama!” I screamed as I followed her to the patio. “Come back here!”

  “Jackal!” she taunted from the alley. “Jaaack-alll!”

  I came back in and slammed my palm on the wall. A bulb fell off the tree. “Pierce. Go after her.”

  He looked down. “Gee, Mom. She’s not coming back until she wants to, and she really fights.”

  “Okay, just … be with her. Please?”

  Pierce snatched his jacket and sped out the patio and up the alley.

  Sky plopped on the sofa and leafed through the photos. “Shit. That kid. Elephants, f’r crissakes.”

  “What?” I glowered at Sky. “That’s all you have to say?”

  He waved his hand. “She pulled it off and got out before she got in too deep.”

  “Too deep? Oh, for God’s sakes, Sky. You never back me up.”

  Sky shifted into Hoosier. “Goddamn it. I’d like to throw her against the wall, but it’s done. Anyway, she’s got luck. Bulls her way through anything.”

  I sat on the couch. “Oh, thank you, loving father. It wasn’t your money. It’s never your money she steals.” I rubbed my forehead, claws out.

  Sky tossed the photos on the table. “Okay, my kid’s safe. I’m outta here.”

  The front door closed. On the floor, Jama’s bag had spilled dirty underwear, jeans, tops and sarongs. By the cookies were photos of Jama and Shana, both in sarongs and gaudy necklaces, mounted on an elephant, mugging for the camera. I kicked the table.

  That had been so many years ago, and yet every Christmas that night haunts me. The night Jama hated me. And I hated her. Now, the car was starting to warm up.

  “Okay,” Saul said, “are we better now?”

  “Not yet.” I kissed him, enjoying the way he held me, the sense of security and wisdom matching warm air flowing from the heater’s round teeth.

  “Look,” he said, “go to bed. Get some sleep. I hate to bring you back to the present.”

  “Oh, please do. You got to talk to Abby.”

  “Ah, she’s a vocal hemorrhoid. About this intruder at the mansion. Watch yourself, okay?.”