The Saint Louisans Read online

  Ideas were tossed out like dull pennies into a fountain. Convent school. Relatives down around Cape. Finally, the telephone rang, and, after more conversation that was hard to follow, I heard the Dwarfs heave a big sigh of collective relief, and the very next day, I was farmed out to Aunt Mary Allbright and her husband, Spud, who lived sixty miles south in Dubourg.

  When they arrived next day, Aunt Mary wore a dark blue dress, an imitation Christian Dior model with belt, stand-up collar and flared skirt. White pearls, gloves, and a shell hat set off the blue and complimented an erect posture that said no nonsense, if you please. Spud was rumpled and gruff, his fedora Confederate gray. The Dwarfs didn’t so much as greet them as watch them warily. It was a cease-fire of sorts, between enemy camps in the same family.

  “So this is Cindy Lee.” Aunt Mary got in the first word, and I could tell she enjoyed it immensely. She looked me over, raising her eyebrow at my cardboard suitcase and Raggedy Ann clutched against my chest.

  “When will Mommy come for me?” I asked.

  “Not for a while. In the meantime, you’re going to have some fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “Sure. You’re leaving this crowd, aren’t you?”

  The Dwarfs frowned at each other.

  Uncle Rudy (Sleepy) nodded knowingly to Spud. “Now, if she gives you any trouble …”

  Aunt Mary looked at me as she bent down and smoothed my hair. “Rudy, I’m on my best behavior today.”

  “I meant the kid.”

  Spud smiled. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “Sure, Spud … just that you know what Lena May and Ike were like. He was kinda wild, and you know what they say about juvenile delinquents—”

  “It’s under control, Rudy,” Spud said in a voice so cold the words nearly froze in midair.

  Once in the car I looked out the window as the Dwarfs watched with folded arms; no waves, all of them lined up against a row of brick flats. Aunt Mary gave a deep sigh. “Come on, Spud, let’s get away from these drips.”

  “Rudy,” Spud growled as he shifted gears. “I’m gonna punch his lights out someday.” Aunt Mary looked back at me and rested her chin on the front seat. “Don’t mind us, kiddo; you’re hearing the sounds of a happy couple.”

  “Yeah,” gruffed Spud, “tra-la-la.”

  I left the Dwarfs, rescued by Tracy and Hepburn.

  There was light chitchat as we headed south on Highway 67, passing its bevy of roadside stops and motels. I stared out the window, hugging Raggedy Ann while Mary leaned over and studied me with lively, thoughtful eyes.

  “Kiddo,” she said, “I know you’re scared. A little hinky about all this aren’t you?”

  I nodded. “I miss Daddy.”

  “Sure,” her voice lowered. “I miss him, too. He was my brother, and pulled my pigtails more than once. We all miss him. Did he ever talk to you about Lindbergh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.” I shifted. “Daddy called him ‘Lucky Lindy.’”

  “That’s why Ike became a pilot. We grew up loving Lucky Lindy.”

  Spud rounded a curve. “Also Ike joined up to get the hell out of Dubourg. Figured the Air Force was the ticket to punch.”

  “Okay.” Aunt Mary shrugged. “That, too. But, Cindy Lee, know you’ve got a home now. With us. Dubourg needs an Air Force kid. Badly. Show these bumpkins what the world’s like.” She touched my shoulder. “You up to it?”

  I nodded and tried to be brave. Like Daddy.

  Aunt Mary taught at Dubourg High School. She was an English teacher (always said with a capital E). She had miscarried six years earlier and couldn’t have children, but there was never a hint of gloom in their house.

  I liked to read, was precocious, and Aunt Mary became a willing mentor. I lived in the world of books. I imitated her. My conversation, with its intonations, purging of dialect, and direct manner is pure Aunt Mary.

  Spud was the type of man who smiled at meat loaf and winced at broccoli. He was dull but dear, working as an engineer for the mining company. He always called his job ‘the salt mines’ and occasionally returned in working clothes and miner’s helmet when underground inspections were held. At times, he was so cantankerous about “kids these days,” that I thought he must’ve been the man who taught W.C. Fields about kids, but I was exempt from his criticisms.

  Dubourg was safe, quiet, and all-American. We went on family vacations, visiting Civil War battlefields, scenic fishing rivers, quaint college towns, and places with pillars. I don’t know what it was with pillars, but Aunt Mary was always snapping photos of them in their Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian glory.

  In those last blinks of the fifties and early sixties, there were also trips to St. Louis when the city was ‘first in shoes, booze, and the American league.’ We made it a point to go to St. Louis twice a year.

  First was Christmas. We’d drive up in Spud’s big Chrysler—he was a Chrysler man, which he and Aunt Mary saw as Motown’s equivalent of Presbyterianism—and he’d park it carefully before we boarded one of the cavernous city buses that hissed and sighed at every stop. The streets smelled of gasoline, coal, and a whiff of the malodorous hops from the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Our major target was Famous-Barr department store at Seventh and Olive, and I was always fascinated by storefront windows filled with Christmas scenes replete with robotic figures of elves at work, moving left-right-left in their toy shop; Christmas carolers in Dickensian costume, heads swaying to and fro as they sang; a family at their Christmas tree, picking up gifts and pointing, picking up gifts and pointing.

  The storefront machinery was countered by a forest of humanity rushing past me in their coats and hats doing the Christmas bebop. Policemen at the corner pipped their whistles to herd crowds across the streets. I saw all kinds of people unimaginable in Dubourg, especially blacks. Foreign tongues gabbled above me. Beautiful, un-Baptist women clopped down the street in spike heels and fur coats. No trip home would be complete without a visit to Famous-Barr’s bakery and a white cardboard box filled with their jelly doughnuts. I craved their rich, almost black jelly and powdered sugar on top of a dark, moist, bun. It was the most artful jelly doughnut ever made. I still mourn its passing.

  The second time was in summer. We’d visit the Muny Opera in Forest Park. We braved the outdoor theater and the spongy humidity of St. Louis summers to hear musicals. Huge, propeller-like fans roared before the performance to circulate the air, reminding me of airplanes and Dad in his jet. The musicals bonded me to Aunt Mary and Spud, because they were our music, that of an era I call B.A., before the assassination. Our favorite was South Pacific. Its tunes flowed out like juice from a squeezed orange, and I loved Nellie Forbush, the wisecracking nurse who fell in love with the French guy. The kernel that made me become a nurse was planted when she scrubbed her head and sang about washing that man right out of her hair.

  And then, my favorite trip of all was camping out on the floor before the TV set when it broadcast the Veiled Prophet Ball and its yearly convocation when the Prophet held his court of love and beauty. It was magical.

  The Veiled Prophet Association (or the Krewe of the Mystic Order of the Veiled Prophet of the Enchanted Realm, if you take the scenic route) was formed in 1878 by wealthy St. Louisans who wanted to imitate their more raucous cousins down the river and throw a Mardi Gras cum débutante ball for their daughters. I delighted in watching its pageantry absorbed in its black and white splendor while Aunt Mary graded papers and Spud cleaned his shotgun (it was during hunting season).

  There were maids of honor, heralds, pages in tights, Verdi’s march from Aida announcing the presentation of debutantes wearing single-plumed tiaras imitating the English royal court and their three plumes. Bearded and robed ministers of the court proclaimed in stilted rhetoric the wishes of His Mysterious Majesty. Bengal Lancers marched and flourished lances.

  The Prophet was indeed veiled, having been borrowed from Thomas Moore’s oriental fancy Lallah Rookh, w
hose veiled prophet—‘The veil, the silver veil, which he had flung in mercy there, To hide from mortal sight his dazzling brow, till man could bear Its light no more…’—crowned his queen, later honored with a torchlight parade through the streets of downtown St. Louis. The Prophet and his ladies appeared enclosed in a glass box like precious gems. This only increased my delight. Later, I found out it was plastic because boys had started throwing rocks and firing pea shooters, a sign that the fifties and its Eisenhower peace was starting to unravel. The Veiled Prophet’s troubles multiplied as the sixties rumbled and matured. Marches were held against the Veiled Prophet Ball as being racist, a privileged toy of the ruling class. In 1972, a crisis was reached when a woman broke into the ball and jerked off the Prophet’s veil. Horror!

  For far too long, I obsessed over the court of love and beauty. I wanted to be crowned; become a secret princess, a changeling who had royal blood. After all, even though loved by Aunt Mary and Spud, I was a child on loan. Outwardly I was a precocious savant imitating Aunt Mary, but inwardly I wanted a crown. I wanted to be Nurse Forbush swept off my feet by a Frenchman in the tropics. I wanted the magic of Christmas shopping and the spectacle of its windows. I wanted to wear a tiara again, recalling the day Dad crowned me in his cockpit. But the fantasies that charmed me as a child would later bloom with unfortunate results for little Cindy Lee Taylor.

  And now those long-dead fantasies had been resurrected to haunt me in the person of Margot Desouche, the Margo Desouche who once been crowned Veiled Prophet Queen and who remained one of the association’s power brokers. And who had now asked me to help her die.

  3

  Nurse Cape

  I parked my car next to the gated tower that looked like it had been detached from one of Mad Ludwig’s Bavarian castles. Standing next to its graceful turret and iron gate, the security guard nodded to me. I was expected. A lifting breeze, the first suggestion of autumn, revealed the red silk lining of my blue wool cape.

  The tower belonged to Chouteau Place, built in the 1870s, a private street much like Portland or Westminster Place, those gated islands of St. Louis wealth; mansions running the gamut from early Federal to imitation Medici Palazzi; there is even a folly that begins with Heidelberg Castle and ends with King Tut’s tomb. Worlds of turrets, trianons, and the Romanesque … fancies permitted old money before egalitarianism and income tax laws took their toll.

  By the 1920s, old money in St. Louis began to move away from the commercial build of nearby Grand Avenue, and after the war, Chouteau Place was a tarnished jewel in the midst of a raffish neighborhood. The Desouche mansion was the centerpiece of the street. Saul adored it, and I saw it through his eyes. It was built in 1900, a copy of the Charles S. Hills house on the old Forest Park Terrace, once called Millionaire’s Row. All of those mansions had long been destroyed to make way for a new hospital, housing, and commercial interests, and by the mid-sixties, all had become urban blight. But this twin remained.

  Both pompous and delicate, the structure was built of Carthage stone, capped by a red-tiled roof. Its front portico boasted four pillars of Corinthian design, and on its side entrances were five pillars like Grecian bookends. Aunt Mary and Spud would have been delighted. The balustrades were complimented by stonework design around its windows, its stairs leading to a gabled doorway that promised a world Henry James might well have novelized. I could see why Saul loved the mansion. It was a man’s dream, wages for empire gained.

  The brass knocker shined with a lion’s grin above it. When the door opened, an elderly butler looked me over, a man with the posture and stiffness of a genteel drill sergeant. I wasn’t entering high society. I was going through customs. That kind of look over.

  “Good morning,” I said, “I’m—”

  “You’re her.” The frost in his voice matched the outside. “You’re a minute late. And you wear a cape.” The accent was German, the tone locked and loaded.

  “Which of those three am I most guilty of?”

  He bade me enter. “It is merely an observation. This way.”

  I thought to click my heels, but shrugged. I was impressed by the marble floor and statuary in the foyer, but when I entered the drawing room, the sensuality of its soft gilt and warm carpeting was a butterfly of pleasure. Huge French windows bathed one in morning light, and would later glow in sunset’s resignation. I could imagine the dinner parties and debutante’s laughter bouncing off these walls, the stiffness of first communion photographs. There were paintings: a Watteau whose playful rococo sensibility made the room smile. Portraits of Desouche Mere and Pere stared out in Gallic dignity, cautious about being submerged into American society, when the early 1800s city was swamped by Yankees—the “Bostons,” as the French irritatingly called their new masters.

  The portraits were painted by one of the itinerant portraitists of the 1830s: competent enough, but he had trouble with hands and knuckles. He curved them into trowels. The fourth painting was of Margot Desouche in her youth, exactly as Saul had described it to me. Chestnut hair curled, cheekbones high, a noble forehead bearing the tiara of the Veiled Prophet Queen. Her smile was assured and radiant as she presided over the court of love and beauty.

  “It was painted by Scott MacNutt,” a firm but gracious voice called behind me. “He was rather old by then, but still much in demand by everyone in St. Louis.”

  Margot Desouche smiled with benign charm as she limped into the drawing room, supporting herself on a shiny black cane. The butler helped her in until she nodded. “Please bring us tea,” she instructed. With a slight bow, he reluctantly withdrew.

  “You were very beautiful,” I said.

  She sat in an Empire chair, looked at the portrait, and sighed. “Thank you for using the past tense. I hate flattery. Had enough of it. Sick of it all, and now I’m sick in the final way.”

  I was aware I was being studied by her clear gray eyes, much as I had done so with the portraits.

  She motioned toward a matching chair and said, “Please have a seat, Mrs. Bridger, or is it Ms.?”

  “Call me Lee.”

  “Yes,” she was relieved, “Lee is a pretty name. Please call me Margot.”

  The French name was expected. In St. Louis society, although long immersed in America, the French families often give themselves French names. Her children were Pierre, Therese, also known as Terri, and Lucas. Lucas committed suicide fifteen years ago.

  “I spoke to Dr. Kemper,” I began. “He said your cancer is pancreatic.”

  “That means I’ll die.” Margot passed sentence calmly.

  I was used to patients euphemizing, but Margot would have none of it. I took out some booklets and brochures from my case.

  “The recovery rate is three percent,” I said. “Colon or breast cancer has an eighty-eight to ninety-one percent recovery, but it usually means half make it, half don’t. Dr. Kemper is prepared to try some radical therapy—”

  “No, Lee. I prefer to make my peace. That is why you are here. Saul said the nicest things about you. I don’t want to die in a hospital. A hospice … is different, isn’t it?”

  The butler returned with a tea tray and poured for both of us.

  I smiled at him, and then turned to Margot.

  “It’s more a state of mind than an actual place.”

  “A place to die, then.” Margot was determined not to sound helpless.

  “I think of it more as a place of meeting. A place of transit. Of arrival and departure.” I let that sink in, then offered one of the booklets.

  “As this explains—”

  Margot quickly took the glossy booklet and set it down. “Please. I want you to tell me. To hear your voice … Lee.”

  “The hospice began in medieval Europe,” I continued. “It was used by pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land and a refuge for the dead and dying. The root word is hospes, which means both host and guest.”

  Margot nodded with intent eyes, waiting for me to continue.

  “The modern hosp
ice was created by Dame Cicely Saunders. It is St. Christopher’s, in Sydenham. West London.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “On my first trip abroad, I went and was able to meet Dame Cicely herself. In America we treat it more as a program of care than an actual place.”

  “You help people die in their homes.”

  “We should speak with your relatives.”

  “My children?” she scoffed. “They’re vultures. The estate is all they care about. They’ve run away from me for years, and now that I’m dying, they’ll all reappear with lawyers.” For the first time, her gracious expression hardened into a mask. “I warn you, Lee: the bile they have for me will be passed on to you.”

  This came out of nowhere. Why would I be a target? Okay, I thought, the family has wounds. There was bad blood between her and her surviving children, Pierre and Terri. Luca’s suicide had been a media event, and the sibling’s accusations at their parents had been a feeding frenzy for the local press. St. Louis is a small town in this respect, and the Desouche rumblings were common knowledge, but I was here to heal as well as comfort.

  “We’ll work it out,” I said.

  Margot’s eyes and tone implied a mystery. She was wanting to bond with me in some unique way. Needing more information, I went along.

  “Stay with me until the end,” she said. “I want to get to know you in the time that is left. Money is no object. Please, Lee. I don’t want to seem a rich woman trying to buy you, but,” she stopped as her eyes moistened, “I’m alone.”

  I leaned toward her, my fingers curled around hers. “No, you’re not.”

  Relieved, she sat up straight, her posture like that of the portrait.

  “I haven’t led a useless life,” she said, returning to the voice of society. “I accept my end, but not to die alone. It would be incomplete.”

  Die. A word avoided in America because of its finality. Most Americans ‘pass away,’ but Margot Desouche was old money, and preferred the old language. She was direct and to the point, hardly a batty recluse, or a St. Louis version of Mrs. Havisham.