The Saint Louisans (24 page)

Saul's voice sank back to normal. “At least they didn't blame the Jews. This time.” He pondered his empty glass, as if it were the last page of a story. “That was awfully kind of them.”

Margot smiled and leaned to one side. She was on the long couch in the drawing room, comfortable with a thick quilt and large, deep cushions. I had just finished telling her Saul's story about Sonia. “So exotic and colorful,” she said. “Do you think he hates this Sonia as much as he claims?”

“He doesn't like her. When I first met him, we had to get over his—” I searched for a word, “reticence about women. A lousy marriage made him gun shy, and Sonia was probably very good at deflating egos. Saul was wounded. I think I sensed that, and his sensitivity intrigued me. Aroused me.”

“Aroused?” Margot said. “That's a loaded word.”

“I enjoy men's vulnerability. Not to master them. I don't like to play power games, but to understand them. To see what needs to be done to make them whole.”

Margot nodded at this. “I'm much more conservative than you. Terri would say I'm a society bitch.”

I blinked at the word coming from Margot's lips. She only smiled.

“I'm not as staid as my children would like to think. When I was with Ike, everything seemed so free and possible. Oh, Lee, I just couldn't stop thinking about him. You'll never know how great your father was, and to know he died like he did …” Her brief reverie ended. “I am drowsy. Do I take my medicine now?”

“Yes.”

“Will it stop the nausea?”

I smoothed her hair. “Not much.”

She closed her eyes and murmured. “My little girl. My good, strong, wise little Lee.”

“Mom,” I whispered, more dutifully than affectionately. Still, I could tell it relaxed her to hear me say the word.

Margot took her meds, and waited to fall asleep. “Tell me about Doc,” she said. “You haven't said much about him, but I can tell you loved him.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you love him for his vulnerabilities? I certainly don't see doctors that way.”

“Doc,” I sighed, moving to the floor and its thick carpet, and sitting cross-legged on it.

“We shared being healers, and how we looked at the sick in different ways. In a funny way, it bound us closer.”

“He was wise, wasn't he?”

“A sage,” I suggested. “He was a good sounding board, and we could laugh together. As Holly Golightly said, ‘If you can't laugh in bed with a man, then it's no damned good.'”

Margot smiled and reached out to pat my shoulder. “Your father and I did that. We laughed in bed together. Oh, how we explored each other.”

I looked out the window to see frozen tree limbs, like bones in a skin of ice, recalling Sara's description: ‘A glittering glassy plume of every tree.'

But when I think of Doc, I think of summer. Of two crows cawing outside the window, then winging off. Of humidity rich and full, permeating the air, of Doc's long, tanned fingers rinsing plump black cherries.

I remember flexing my fingers, looking up at him with a serious expression. “Ready for the operation.”

His face crinkled to a wry smile. “Patients have been sterilized.”

“Scalpel.”

Doc placed the paper clip in my hand.

“I abhor pits and spitting them out,” I said, quickly slicing cherries with my knife, then scooping out the pits with the end of the paper clip.

“I agree,” he said. “spitting was most indecorous at the Yacht Club.” He chuckled. “‘That snottier than snot club.' We sang that. Some of us. The drunks, bored, and bored drunkards. But continue with the operation, nurse.”

“We slice them in half, remove the pits. The clip is an old tip from Aunt Mary.”

I was making an assembly line of cherries. My fingers inked with cherry blood. Pits were stacked to one side, like messy cannonballs.

“I could lick your fingers,” Doc whispered, kissing my neck, “or scrub them. Finger after finger.”

We kissed, and I surveyed the counter. Peaches, tomatoes. “The best part of a Missouri summer.” My paper clip now sticky and slippery. “Fresh garden tomatoes, a dishpan full of wilted lettuce with green onions, watermelons, cantaloupe, soft peaches that smell ripe. Even if you're not an eater, you have to be impressed by so much of it. Does nature intend us to have a gluttonous orgy?”

“Of course,” said Doc, “back home, it's always cornucopia time. The wines, especially. The fruit. Such a paradise.”

His voice was an invitation, an apple held out to entice his Eve. I thought about South Africa and the conversation I wanted to have with him. He picked up one of the well-worn books of Sara Teasdale's poetry, thumbing through it.

“Sara,” he said with quiet satisfaction. “Most nurses I see are into the pot boilers and covers of ripped bodices and the like.”

“I read junk, too,” I said as the unpitted cherries shrank to a dozen. “I breezed through
The Exorcist
one night when I was the only nurse on the floor. But Sara keeps me thinking, and I like to memorize. Keep my brain working. About 4:15, I'd get drowsy and do poetry. I'd pace the hall, go to the Labor room and stare out its picture window toward the Arch. Recite Sara until the sky lightened.” I sighed. “Then came the a.m. temps and charts, and I'd wait for day shift to trickle in.”

The cherries de-pitted, I made a final rinse, dark juice circling down the drain. It really did look like the aftermath of general surgery. Doc nodded.

“Yes,” sighed Doc, “that's when I started to really notice you, you know. Having my coffee and hear you in the station chat up the other nurses. Thoughtful, bawdy talk.”

I smiled. “Given a week of quiet shifts, nurses would solve the world's problems.”

He absently picked up the book as I dried my hands. “Sara killed herself, did she?”

“Yes. Not a Sylvia Plath. She'd been an invalid all her life, her lover died. There was no one to talk to or listen. I think she'd just had enough.”

“Sad, I think, when I recall all the hypochondriacs.” Doc leaned against the counter, and I enjoyed seeing him slouch. He had a way of looking like a lion at rest. “Especially Mrs. Tennent.”

“Ah, yes” I intoned. “‘The imperious invalid.'”

Doc held up a peach, its body soft and odorous in its ripeness. “I keep refusing to write out medications for her. Hypochondriacs,” he shrugged, “they don't want to play by the rules. Their illnesses are their treasures.”

“Well,” I said, preparing the salad, “hypos come into the world more sensitive and jumpier than other people. Their organisms are more reactive than normal.”

“You always see things differently.”

“I'm a nurse; you're a doctor. I mean, we do the care and providing.” I finished chopping the onions and tomatoes. “Look, in a hospital, docs are transients. They admit patients, diagnose diseases, and see cures are carried out. Since you're a surgeon, you use it as a body shop.”

Doc laughed and I sighed as his hands pressed into my waist. I only wore a halter, so I enjoyed his soft fingers as they moved to my shoulder blades.

“Are we that bad?” he whispered.

“I'm merely observing, Daktari. To all of you, it's a way station. We nurses treat it as home. We practically live there.”

“Thank God for that. For you, Lee.” He set out the guacamole dip. “I recall Mrs. Krone.”

“Yes,” I nodded, “the metastatic breast cancer.”

“The cancer was just too advanced, but the family wanted to keep fighting on.” He took the bottle and poured two glasses of Lambrusco. “I discussed new experimental therapies. It was sheer fantasy, of course, but easier to do
than face reality.” He and I clinked glasses. “They call you the angel of death. At first it confounded me, but you were able to explain things to them. In a way I couldn't. Can't.”

I noshed on a tomato, enjoying the siren call of cicadas somewhere.

“When I was in critical care, one of our patients had open heart surgery. He was out of the hospital for a month, then had to be rushed back. The wife wanted ‘everything' done. Drugs, ventilator … we tried to insert a tracheotomy tube.” I crunched salad. “His kidneys gave out. He puffed up, skin waterlogged …”

Doc stared at his glass. “He went into a coma, didn't he?”

I nodded. “It was over. But she wouldn't let go. After I'd finished my shift, I went to the room. It always feels like you're in a fish tank, that closeness, silence except for the drips and oxygen, the lights low and centered. And the watching. When death starts, we seem to go back to our origins.” I shrugged.

“His name was Harvey. It was hopeless, but his wife had to decide for herself. We began talking about the marriage, the kids, shared photos. Jama was in her cutesy-poo stage, Pierce starting to be a heart breaker. I told her how nice Harvey was to all of us on the floor. Her eyes tried to follow me, but they kept darting back to him. She asked me if he was going to get better. Over and over.”

Doc's intent eyes waited. My God, the man really listened. Outside, the first shadows crept across the patio. I remember smelling pizza from a nearby apartment. Imo's, of course, with that tell-tale whiff of Provel cheese. “I told her Harvey wasn't there anymore. It was the machines keeping his heart going. They were his life, now. If they were shut off, he would die in a few minutes.”

“And?”

“She stared at him for a long quiet moment and then rose and went out the door. I heard her blow her nose and shuffle around the hallway. I'll always remember that shuffling. A couple of minutes later, she reentered and asked me to call the doctor. She wanted Harvey off.”

I paused as shadows grew, leaving daylight at the treetops, snared in the sunset. “Twenty minutes later, he died peacefully. I gave her what she needed. No medical jargon, no fantasies. She understood.”

We ate in silence that night as the first evening breeze flowed through
the window. Torrid, the usual for August, offering only the suggestion of relief. Doc cleared his throat and ate.

“I was frightened when you told me you'd had cancer of the cervix. Of it recurring.”

“It's not invasive. We know that.” I took his hand.

“Sure,” Doc said “but cancer always seems to be an ‘if'.”

“Sorry. I'm used to making cancer my war story. It helps when I talk to people.”

Doc's laugh almost purred. Under the table, his foot stroked my leg. My toes replied in kind.

It was time to flirt, listen to jazz, then go upstairs. Pierce was away at a science fair in Indianapolis, and Jama was with Sky and his kin in Iron County riding horses and learning too much about relatives in the marijuana biz. It was past time for that conversation.

“The news,” I began slowly, “another nine people were killed in Soweto. It's growing.” His eyes became defensive, used to another attack on South Africa. He peeled a peach, the knife feathering the skin, leaving a smooth orange globe that glistened in the light. He cut slices.

“Ah,” he said, “the problem. We must talk about the problem. Enough of cancer and medicine. Now we must be serious.”

“I am curious. It seems—”

“What? ‘Seems' what?”

I slouched, leg up. “We talk about the countryside. Your family. The fruit. Your life and times, but never ‘it.'”

Doc didn't tense up like a caged man. Sweat stains darkened his sides, a reminder for us to bathe together after lovemaking, not that I needed to be reminded.

“You're right. It's time for that talk. Of course I'm against Apartheid. Most of us are, you know. It is time to move on, but it's complicated.” His shrug weary; not annoyed, just burdened. “Yes, you keep hearing that. Everyone in the world does, and they don't want that. They want a cure. An immediate cure, as though South Africa were Harvey writ large.” He offered me a peach slice. I bit. “Look. We're deluged with blacks coming south for work because where they live, their ‘democracies' chased out investment. Then come strikes, boycotts. They put people out of work.
Schools are empty, when children should be getting an education. Blacks are extremely tribal, and they'll—”

“Doc, look—”

“Please, let me finish. “They'll be at each other's throats while their agitators will seek to build their power base. They'll kill each other and the world. The frightfully concerned buggers in drawing rooms and newsrooms won't care, because when blacks kill blacks, that's acceptable. Much like your lot in East St. Louis and north of here.”

“You can't make that judgment. South Africa is their country.”

“I'm also an African. My descendants were there before many blacks who came from the north. The press tells you in the West what you want to hear. North of us, in ‘democratic' Africa, it's one man, one vote, one time.”

I was struck, perhaps saddened by Doc's calm manner. He wasn't wrong or right. He was one man caught in history. My response was calmly dutiful. “Apartheid has to end.”

“Of course. It must. But it's a cancer. Do we cut it out? Can you cut out history without unforeseen repercussions? I'm not countering what you want. I'm genuinely curious.” To my relief, Doc laughed in his mild, bemused way as I mopped up my plate. “Really, Lee. I want things to change. I'm not some lout in the Broederbund talking of all the loving kaffirs happily laboring under him.”

I didn't want to quarrel, and wasn't in the mood for a panel discussion of the problem. When I rose to collect the plates, Doc joined me at the sink.

“Don't see me as a political symbol. How did D.H. Lawrence put it? ‘Poor Richard Lovatt saw the problem in himself and called it Australia.'”

When he held me, my sigh was long and restful. “We've been sniffing each other for ages. Look, I want you, but it's not just the politics.” I enjoyed my hands wrapping around his waist. “I'm not meant to be married. I failed twice. Just now, Sky and I had a row over child support. It reminds me how quickly an amiable divorce can tumble back into all the shambles the marriage was.”