The Saint Louisans

by Steven Clark

  “There is that restraining order.”

  I wanted to make a snappy comeback, but my wit was on empty.

  Dick spoke. “Do you want to arrange a meeting?”

  Damned straight, I wanted to say, but I paused. Okay, Lee. Calm down. I needed space. For now, it was more Bonsai than Banzai. “I’ll take a rain check. Should I bring my attorney, so we can do a tag-team?”

  Dick’s graying eyebrows raised. “You’ll do fine on your own. Just call me.”

  I nodded. One of his interns peeked from the firm’s glass doors, telling Dick he got a fax, and did he have the Kung Pao Shrimp or the Moo Shi Pork?

  Dick had the pork. I didn’t take him for a shrimp kind of guy. Looking skyward, past the girders, I saw wings.

  While I walked to the Metrolink station, avian body parts were scattered along the way. Here a claw, there bloodied wings, and the odd head or two. An outsider might think St. Louis was in the grip of a santeria cult, but the parts were because of falcons. Peregrine falcons nest on the summits of our high rises, and pigeons were a natural food source, feathered convoys to equally feathered U-boats. When I looked up at the skylight, I saw a falcon’s wings curve in the sky; low, due to the fog. God, how I wanted it to clear.

  Lindbergh said St. Louis air was always the worst, with air currents forcing dips, making the last stage of a landing or a sharp dive, a finger-crossing experience. I descended into the chilly station, bothered by eagles. Recalling the grid of that skylight, as if it were my own prison.

  Back in my apartment I brushed past Yul and went to the closet. Out came the plastic tub that, when opened, gave a whiff of old letters, the odor of history. I went for the ones on top.

  Doc’s letters. Nearly translucent airmail envelopes, blue-like squares of sky, the stamps almost the weight of the letters, their color a false gravity to words. I passed through Doc’s letters to mine, especially the last. Its edges jagged. He must have opened it in a hurry, hoping I’d say yes. I sank to my knees and read it, smiling at my nurseisms, the way I carried medical terminology into my letter writing: c means with, s without, a before, p after.

  Richard:

  I’ve considered your offer, and as I write this, I recall watching the eagles return to bluffs above the Missouri. P we waited, they flew out from their nests, wings wide as Texas (Aunt Maryism there). I enjoyed seeing your face light up as they swooped to the water to hunt. A beauty S parallel, you said in that tone I love.

  The river, Doc, she’s mine. S parallel back at you. Oh, love, you’re so right. South Africa is your country. You can’t be an ex-pat anymore. Eagles need a nest. I’m tied here. I hadn’t planned on it, but this river is my home. With you, I felt completed more than with any other man. But I can’t leave. Richard, please come back. You can make this our world. Stay home for a year, see if your roots reconnect. If not, love, I’m here. Waiting.

  When I see eagles, I’ll think about you.

  Love, Lee

  Two months later, the letters were mailed back to me, along with photos. On the back of the envelope is a wing of dried blood. He took it to work with him, and must have read it more than once. If it had been a Bible, it might have stopped the bullet. As it was, it was only air and memory.

  My heart stung, and I wiped away tears as the apartment filled with that early afternoon light that suspends time. Doc. Jama. Margot. St. Louis. All of them and everything. I had to get away, and as Yul strolled by, his tail pluming the tub, I shot to my feet, thinking again of Sara:

  But when I sought the House of Dreams

  To creep within and die,

  The wind of Truth had leveled it,

  And passed it by.

  I was back at Bellefontaine cemetery with the angels. And Sara. And myself. April in Bellefontaine is not quite the cruelest month. Daffodils bloomed in canary yellow, as did deceptively snow-like patches of crocus. Both risked wilting in a cold snap, but they came forth to remind us what goes around comes around. In this case, life.

  In my life, everything was stalled. Saving the mansion, reconciling Margot and my bilious half-sibs. Vess Moot and his determined call for social justice. And need we mention Jama? We need not. I was supposed to be the angel to set things right. Instead I was a jackal, preparing Margot for her end.

  All of us were boxed in. St. Louis is the ultimate American city stuck in its own inertia. It’s on a cosmic river (a woman’s river, mind you), with ruins to the first American city up the bend, and what does it do? It stays stuck. Just like Provel sticks to your teeth.

  I pondered this as I stood before the girl in the shadow box.

  Bessie, she is fondly called. Eight feet tall, with a pose not necessarily angelic. Her left hand closes seductively over her throat, her right hand fingers open, as if lifting from a keyboard. Legs crossed like we do when our date is late, her gown ripples with billowing folds from an invisible, eternal breeze. Her face and figure are sensual; a Felliniesque angel.

  She was a sculptor’s model in Italy whom Herman Luytins, a prominent druggist from our fair city, fell in love with. He popped the question, but she refused (St. Louis druggists are notoriously easy to turn down if you’re an Italian sculptor’s model; there was also a Mrs. Luytins in the picture), and a shattered Herman commissioned a statue of her to keep in his Portland Place mansion. She may have disdained marriage, but not a final pose.

  Her twelve-ton statue became too heavy for the mansion, so to alleviate Bessie’s strain on the foundation (and no doubt Mrs. Luytin’s forbearance), she went to Bellefontaine. Luytins died in 1920 and was buried before Bessie, his grave a footstool to the memory of her unobtainable beauty. When St. Louis smog and industrial grit began to peck and carp at her delicate marble body, a glass box was put over her. Luytin’s grave is a shy man’s bonding with his great love, much like Joseph Marconnet’s shyness demanded he be mummified and displayed in his own glass case for all eternity.

  I perused Bessie (a silly name for an angel, but that’s St. Louis for you), her glass almost a mirror. Wasn’t I the little girl who loved to see the Veiled Prophet parade on TV? I who admired the Queen and her court of love and beauty in their float drawn down the torchlit street in plastic covering from peashooters that I took for a glass box. Margot treasured her hidden affair with my father, a love as hopeless as Luytins had for Bessie.

  Bessie’s encasement recalls The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee William’s play, the St. Louis play of frailty, lost hopes, and wounded souls dealing with a mendacious city; the glass box needed to shelter Bessie from equally mendacious St. Louis pollution. Inside, Bessie’s robes billow and swirl as she looks on in a gaze between dispassion and sultry … her round chin and nose recall Jama in disturbing imitation, catching the Childe Fantastical in her usual mood mixing sulk and dreaming of that damned elephant movie that she has to see made.

  All of that penned up storm inside the box, recalling Lindbergh’s fears of treacherous St. Louis winds upon the aviator.

  My love for Doc is its own glass case, matching his optimistic hopes for South Africa, hopes that were a container unable to spare him from the ugliness of Apartheid’s end; a new, dark world that killed him.

  Everything at this moment in my life squared and boxed away like the slices of Imo’s pizza where Saul demonstrated city neighborhoods and disruption on the night I realized my son cleaved to his wife and our beautiful relationship changed, as such relationships must, and unlike poor Tom and his wounded family, I let Pierce go, but not without a sigh.

  Bessie and her shadow box is, unlike the statue of Louis the IX, the true epitome of St. Louis, with hopeless longing, encased passions and doubts, all of those inner storms blowing inside our city. It’s like the Laurie Anderson song she wrote for Walter Benjamin, singing of the angel who wants to fix and repair things that are broken, but storms keep blowing the angel back into the future. Yes, Laurie: you’ve summed up my life perfectly. Welcome to St. Louis, the city of lost loves, looking back, and keeping impossible statues i
n the mansions of our souls. The true square beyond compare.

  And we’re on a woman’s river. What to do?

  I knew what I had to do. I gave Bessie a last look, drove off, and flipped open my cellphone.

  Rainer’s voice was in border-crossing mode. “Desouche residence.”

  “Rainer. How is she?”

  “Tired. She rests, but not comfortably. Drinks, but won’t eat.”

  “Look, I have to leave town for a few hours. I’ll be back in the evening.”

  “You will expect me to check her medication and pain dosage. It will be done.”

  “Thank you.”

  A long pause came from Rainer’s end. “Has something happened?”

  “I just need some time alone. Expect me in this evening.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Back home.”

  22

  Look Homeward, Angel

  I drove to Dubourg, the sun breaking out as I approached the county’s rolling hills, bare and brown like a dull carpet. I passed Barbel’s Songbird Inn, the area’s No-Tell-Motel that is the staging ground for Dubourg’s more clandestine roisterings, where Baptists go discreetly wild. I went to high school with Sonny Barbel, who inherited the business from his dad.

  Passing the countryside, I imagined what it would be like two months from now, when blooming dogwoods would peek around their brother oaks and hickories like vestals. Downtown was the usual shroud of boarded up fronts and dusty glass windows. Holman’s Drugs, the Dubourg Cleaners, Finkel’s Variety Store, the Helpee-Selpee Laundromat … all gone. Business had been malled out by the highway.

  So what’s to like? The beautiful park that borders on the south woods. Old houses sprinkled here and there, the high school and memories it entails, the local community college where I started nursing and rebounded from the Len Marbles disaster. A paste necklace of memories. Us kids painting goblins and spooks on downtown window fronts for Halloween, the college’s yearly performance of Handel’s Messiah, the delights of fresh corn, tomatoes, and peaches from the summer garden and local orchard. My nose in a book, any book. Being The Air Force Kid. That’s what they called me at first, and I loved it. I was Ike Taylor’s girl, who’d seen the world and was needed by these bumpkins.

  One never forgets that part of a small town, the warmth that can suddenly, evocatively, pull one back to the secure life of a happy five year old. I enjoyed the warming sun and breezes accompanying children’s giggles at the playground. I visited Aunt Mary.

  Mt. Celestial Cemetery doesn’t live up to its name. A simple boneyard with an iron arch wishboned over the entrance. A fretwork of vines and roses twine around it. The Gateway Arch writ small. It’s on a quiet hillside with a panorama of Dubourg’s steeples and tree-lined streets. Their early blooming is always delightful. Clouds drifted. Sunlight struck dignified light on headstones and the one granite angel. Poor angel, attractive but lonely. I wish he … she … it? … could take a vacation to Bellefontaine and slum around with the city angels. I made my way to the Taylor plot, a dull square of brown, lichen-covered concrete, and sat on the ledge, laying convenience-store daffodils on Aunt Mary and Spud’s grave. It added a welcome splash of color to the stone and winter grass; a peaceful monotony only broken by fist-sized American flags on veteran’s graves.

  I sighed, relaxed and glad that for a moment, the worries of St. Louis were gone.

  I don’t remember … rather, I choose not to remember Aunt Mary’s funeral. Folks here talk about funerals, a common Dubourg topic. It was a good burial … that poem was so pretty I like to have cried. Haven’t seen her around, surprised she showed up. Instead, my mind skywalked to Aunt Mary’s living room where the shadows in the room began to advance across the floor.

  “What is it called again?” Aunt Mary asked.

  “Congestive heart failure. Your left ventricle stopped beating. Tests showed the muscle was attacked by a virus some years ago.”

  A quiet sigh came from her pale lips. “I taught English for over thirty years, and now here I am.”

  “Here you are,” I warmly echoed as I sat down and patted her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Aunt Mary gave one of those regal pauses that became more frequent since Spud’s death.

  Her eyes and face shaded, like four o’clock trees in the Presbyterian churchyard.

  “I don’t think I’ll live long.” Her hand raised to stop my protest. “Please, I’m not going gimpy on you, but I’m wearing down.” She looked to the old plush chair … Spud’s … now unoccupied. “I miss that old grump. Everything’s settled. I’ve papers with Frank Gruber. The Seven Dwarfs and their spawn will get the furniture if you don’t want it. I think we’re down to three, aren’t we? I keep losing count.”

  “Two and a half. Aunt Martha is on a respirator at the Home.”

  Aunt Mary’s lips curled into a smirk. “I’ll have to outlive Martha. Reading that cow’s obituary is my last ambition.”

  I smiled at her, the woman who came and took me away from the Seven Dwarfs, who shepherded me through girlhood. Her sparkle faded as she stroked the armrests of her chair.

  “I had a dream,” she began. “I was in a house by the sea. It felt like New England. It had that kind of severity and serene cleanliness. A woman watched over me, wearing Gibson Girl clothes. I lay in a deck chair, wrapped in quilts. The sea air was salty. The woman served me stews, fruit, salads from a huge bowl. A china bowl with a chip on the rim. The bowl never emptied. I ate, and watched the sea.”

  Aunt Mary gazed at the fireplace of a photo of her and Spud, then continued.

  “I always wanted to move near the ocean, but Spud wouldn’t hear of it. The old poop had his job with the mining company. He liked being landlocked. We toured Civil War battlefields, and he thought that was all the history a man needs.” She sighed. “I talked to Spud about moving, but I was kidding myself. I’d become part of Dubourg. The town brain, liberal, and Queen Bee. I’m going to be a tough act to follow.”

  Aunt Mary rubbed her eyes. “Cindy Lee …” she stopped. “Damn it. Forgive me. Haven’t called you that in ages.”

  “It’s okay. It’s our Margaret Mitchell moment.”

  “I’m losing it, Lee. In my dream, the woman and I watched the sun deepen and sink to the horizon. I wanted the bowl nearby. I had to have the bowl.”

  Her sigh was deep and troubled as I took her hand. It was a mountain climber’s grip, helping a climber up the peak. “The bowl was me.”

  Aunt Mary’s eyes hardened. “For a long time I was disappointed in you. You filled an emptiness Spud and I had. I hoped you would be like me. You weren’t, and I was angry.”

  Memories of my marrying Len, then Sky, and the days I had to borrow gas money to make it back to St. Louis made me silent. “You had reasons.”

  “Not really,” she gently countered, her voice soft but resolute. “When you came back, I was still miffed. Then you went to nursing school. You did pretty darned good, too. When Spud and I came up to see you get your baccalaureate, when we heard you speak—”

  She stopped. The day I graduated from Saint Louis University rushed back. Aunt Mary told me Spud had hacked and wheezed, but had insisted on making the drive. Chris, one of my nursing chums, minded the kids while I got my diploma. I was touched that, after everything, they still loved me, still made the effort. Were proud of me. I didn’t cry, though. Taylors are big on the stiff-upper-lip sort of thing, that Midwestern stoicism that frowns at California touchy-feely.

  That day in her living room, Aunt Mary had said, “When you gave the address, quoting Whitman’s ‘The Wound-Dresser’ … that nurses were ‘To sit by the wounded and soothe them or silently watch the dead,’ I was so proud of you.”

  My hand touched her frail shoulder. “I got the Whitman from you.”

  “I regretted doubting you, and for a dark time in my life, I thought you were just like your mother. ‘Another Lena May Sikes.’ I had my own doubts about life here, and I projected them onto you. I became the
eighth dwarf.”

  “You did not,” I said softly. “I was a handful.”

  “Oh, Lee, it was like watching you drown, and I could do nothing to save you. You said a heart attack does that to your lungs. You feel like they’re full of water.” She took my hand, and our grip tightened. “Thank you for coming into my life, kiddo. You’re worth a hundred houses by the sea.”

  She paused. Stripes of light came from the half-drawn shades. “I had to survive that operation to say this to you. It’s good, Lee. It’s clean. I can walk on the beach now.”

  A school bus stopped across the street, breaking the afternoon silence as children tumbled out, shouting and skipping home.

  Aunt Mary died six months later, while I was on vacation in Venice. She outlived Martha by two months, but I doubt she read the obituary. I gazed at the epitaph on her tombstone, its lines by Sara Teasdale:

  This is the spot where I will lie

  When life has had enough of me,

  These are the grasses that will blow

  Above me like a living sea.

  After her stroke, I remember her silent, approving eyes as I read Sara to her, how she told me, in a voice as soft as a sea breeze, to put those lines above her. Often as not, folks from Dubourg stroll in the cemetery and wonder what part of the Bible that came from. I imagine Aunt Mary’s smiling ghost looking back at me: Babbits.

  Those of us who grew up strange in a small town never get over it. We do one of two things. Change, or begin to enjoy our superiority. When I was at Barnes, I’d hear people from Dubourg, either in the wards or to visiting patients. They spoke in Dubourgese, its small town rhythms and long vowels, and I realized they aren’t my people anymore. When I lived in Dubourg, I was never in love with the people, but the land. Am I now a bona fide St. Louisan? I’m not a Desouche, not really. I’m an angel of death, and soon it would be time to do my duty. I’m an angel, who never really belonged to any place or to any family. Did my father really belong? Ike Taylor, who fled the auld sod to fly? Many philosophers have said, as Doc certainly said, not belonging is the human condition. The wonderful, awful freedom of self.