The Saint Louisans (42 page)

Rasheed reached in. My heart pounded when he pulled out bricks of bills tied together. He nodded as Rainer continued.

“We thought you might appreciate cash. It is very liquid, and no doubt your sheik will savor the visual pleasure of a debt paid.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I don't want this.”

Rainer was cold in the central European mode. “What you want is irrelevant. Madame decided on this course of action, and it is completed. Please don't interfere, and that includes you, Mr. Lowenstein.”

Rasheed clicked the brief case shut. “I am satisfied. As I always thought, there are still a few Americans with honor.”

Saul glowered. “And ready cash.”

Rasheed nodded. “My task here is done. Jama is free of her debt. Within the hour, I fly to my sheik.”

“Yes,” I said with a glare, “don't spend it all on one bombing.”

A quiet triumph glowed in Rasheed's eyes, like when he was in the Cathedral, doing inventory for the Prophet. “In Afghanistan, Mrs. Bridger, they have a saying. ‘You Americans have clocks. We have time.'”

“Goodbye.”

A moment later, Saul held me as we looked out the window and saw Rasheed's car drive away. I lowered my head to Rainer. “I'm sorry about all this.”

Rainer didn't flinch. “Madame said to wait until she talked to Jama. She nodded to me, and I knew what had to be done. To the Desouches, one hundred thousand is, as you Americans say, pin money. As you will soon find out.”

Saul and I went upstairs. Margot had stopped drinking Sprite; her dry mouth wanted ice shavings.

Father Moller arrived and bent over her. She smiled to him, slowly whispering her last confession into his ear. I felt my chest chill as he said I absolve thee of all thy sins.

Terri sat outside the door, rubbing her eyes. “She stares more.”

I nodded. “She's shutting down. It, the cancer, eats everything and saves the brain for last. Soon her memory will slip. It will become puddles of reality, like a river or lake that's drying up. She'll see flashes of us all, then it will fade. Take those moments and love them.”

Pierre had been listening in long silence. “How long does she have?”

“It's different with everyone. The body can fight on. It's a remarkable organism, like a horse that won't obey the reins, but wants to keep galloping.” I rubbed my neck, feeling older, heavier, wasted, as one does with death watches. “It will be hours.”

Pierre coughed and went to the bathroom

“He's going to cry,” Terri whispered.

I sighed. “We all are.”

Two hours later I sat in the drawing room. Kelly came down the stairs, and I offered her a Kleenex. She daubed it, embarrassed at her mascara running, blonde hair bouncing as she rolled her shoulders.

“She smiled at me. Oh, Lee, Margot was one of a kind. When I was at Mary Institute, I was so—” she waved a hand —“so geeky. I can't tell you how lonely I was.”

I nodded at this beautiful girl you'd take one look at and think bimbo. Kelly sighed and stroked her blonde hair that seemed made for the VP Queen's tiara.

“Margot talked to me. She said, ‘Kelly, listen. You're so special and good. Go for Veiled Prophet Queen, my dear. Go for everything, because you have so much to give.'” Kelly offered an unusual frown. “Margot's going to be an angel. I just know it.”

I smiled. “I think you're right.”

I thought of all the love and encouragement Margot gave to Kelly, things she'd stopped giving to her children. But I was one to talk. Jama and I had a truce, one I sadly knew would end with Margot's death. Kelly wiped her eyes.

“Is she in pain?”

“Not anymore. The morphine takes care of that.”

“I hate thinking of that wonderful woman being in pain.”

I nodded slowly. “We need pain, Kelly. It's easy to say we don't suffer, but it defines us. Pain tells us to value what is precious and good. We never grow until we suffer.” I rubbed my temples. “This headache really makes me value not having one. So much for my speeches.”

Kelly rose and sniffed. “I think your speeches are cool.”

Pierre slowly descended the stairs and looked vacantly at family portraits. I saw Kelly's eyes waiting, wanting more talk. I continued.

“In Tolstoy's
The Death of Ivan Illich
, a lawyer dies of cancer. He progresses through the stages of hope, trying to ignore the eating away of his kidney. Then he's afraid. He's angry, then despairs, for he senses he's lived in vain. Finally, there's acceptance, where, as Tolstoy wrote, in place of death there was light.”

Kelly rose, nodded through a fearful smile, and we embraced. A sigh came from behind. “Light,” Pierre whispered, “like what they always say. That final tunnel of light.”

It was time to go back to the bedroom. Pierre joined me as we climbed the stairs.

“I'm not so sure about it and the cheerful beings on the other side. They say the tunnel and bright light are due to the frontal lobes experiencing a lack of oxygen. The temporal lobes kick in, and produce an opium-like fantasy. Perhaps the body is simply letting itself go.”

“So Nirvana isn't spiritual, just organic?” Pierre's voice was like an envelope being opened. “All that remains is pain, and when it's over, we're free. Sure you're not a Buddhist?”

“I keep an open mind.” We entered the room.

I studied Margot's sunken face. I'd given her the last medication, the atrophine for drying up the upper-airway rattle people get when they die. “You understand she's gone. All that's left are reflexes. Look, I don't believe in last words or speeches, all of that Shakespeare hooey. When people die, they moan. Whisper. They give out words that are scraps of their life … the last dry land before the waters rise.”

“Tattie,” whispered Margot. “Tattie give me spoon.”

I looked at Pierre. His sigh was like a coat sliding off the shoulders.

So we listened to Margot the child. The floor creaked, and Terri entered, large circles under her eyes. Jama waited by the door.

“She's talking about Tattie,” Pierre said to Terri, who nodded. “Tattie was a cook. When we were kids. She made delicious cakes.”

“Dear, dear,” Margot sighed to no one in particular. “Dear, dear.”

“Tonight?” asked Terri.

I nodded. “People die easier at night. I think it's the air and dampness. Perhaps nighttime helps the body shut down. In hospitals, it always happens more at night.”

Margot, eyes closed, cracked a weak smile. “Ba-by. Lit-tle baby. Baaaby.”

Terri looked at me. Which baby? Lucas? These two? Or was Margot back in the morning light of a hospital in New Orleans, where time dissolved and she smiled after a long delivery in the exhaustive joy of her first-born?

The deathwatch became, as it always is, a siege. Everyone's tears had been shed; now we were exhaustive and staring. I noticed the light in the room was a dull off-white, like tallow or pumice. Light borrowed from years ago. I remembered the light shared by Pierce and me that muggy afternoon when traffic clogged Columbia's streets. Tailgate parties sprouted like burdocks as Mizzou took on Kansas. Pierce and I had strolled in the old quadrangle past sunlit columns to the museum whose aged brick looked like long-dried nail polish. The quad was still in Indian summer silence. Across the campus came a moan from the stadium, like crashing waves.

“Is this being too nerdy?” Pierce said as he led me in. “Doing a museum on Homecoming?”

“As one nerd to another, why not? We saw the parade, so we've a right to nerd it up, kiddo.”

The brick floor inside was cool and welcome from the humidity. I enjoyed the museum's hermetic feel. Pierce led me to the classical room. “I was doing some more reading on Alpha-2- globulim,” he said. “It's hopeful.”

I slowly nodded. “That's why you're majoring in chemistry? Because you could find a cure for schizophrenia?”

“They think its excess leakage in the brain wall might be a cause.”

I studied the figurines of goddesses and votive offerings. “This is because of your father? Okay, but Pierce, I thought journalism school was it?”

Pierre's wonderfully probing, clear blue eyes examined a Greek
krater
. An eternal carousel of gods and nymphs rounded its lip. “Like I said before, Mom, there's no P.C. in chemistry. A formula is what it is. You can't put quotas on the elements.”

Pierce shifted to the right, perhaps in more than one way. It reminded me of a subtle, creeping conservatism as he aged. When I brought it up, he only smiled and changed the subject.

“Here,” he said. “This is one I really like.”

We stood before a funerary sarcophagus from second century Antioch. A woman dolefully leaned out, arms on its borders as if it were a window sill from eternity. The limestone was off-color. At the woman's edges were flecks of paint, reminding us that classical statuary was painted. I judged the colors must have been bright, like in India.

Pierce pointed. “She reminds me of you.”

The woman's hand rested on her cheek. Below her was written in Greek: To Levira, now free from pain.

Almost two thousand years ago, and things hadn't changed. I was absorbed in the folds of her robe, the sadness of eyes and pose. “Beautiful,” I muttered.

“What did Dad say? Before he died? Anything?”

I looked at Pierce as his eyes studied Levira. “There was nothing. I told you. He hung himself in his room, and that was that. Nothing.” A pause. “You're majoring in chemistry because of him? You're afraid of passing it on to your kids?”

“Not really.” He frowned. “I know you wanted me to be Woodward and Bernstein, but in chemistry, the job prospects are better.” He smiled at Levira. “Can't legislate the elements.”

A sudden thought flashed. “Pierce. When I'm dead. No tomb, okay? Cremation.”

His eyes approved, but he asked, “Why, Mom? Is this freaking you out?”

“No. I just don't want the boneyard thing. Okay?”

“Okay.” He looked at Levira. “Think she had any last words?”

“Take it from me. There are no last words.”

We left the museum and walked down its glazed brick steps. He smiled. “I liked Hart Crane's last words. Tennessee William's favorite poet. He
committed suicide by jumping off a ship in the ocean. He waved. ‘Goodbye everyone!'”

We laughed and went for a bright, leaf-strewn walk downtown repeating ‘Goodbye, everyone!' every five minutes, chuckling at the stares we got in return.

I was exhausted, recalling countless deathwatches. Now, the sheets, drapes. Margot's complexion reminded me of that sarcophagus. The limestone sheen of ever after. A slow rattle came from her throat. There was the night in DePaul Hospital where the long silence of the dying room was broken by as child's jack-in-the-box tune. The maternity ward was down the hall, and every time a baby was born, the tune played on the intercom. Before my patient died, there were three births.

A hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up at Jama.

“It's over,” she said.

Margot's glassy, half-closed eyes, and open mouth. Her head seemed smaller, almost swallowed by the pillow, sheets folded around her like waves. Terri and Pierre were quiet, heads bowed, asleep. Jama massaged her neck.

“Thirty-seconds ago. She startled in her throat. No pulse.”

I gazed at my mother, a woman who gave me up, and then found me, who needed me. We had been on a journey, like the
hospes
I told her about, those way stations to the Holy Land. Now it was done. We had seen Jerusalem. I closed Margot's eyes, then shook Terri and Pierre, as Jama phoned the funeral home.

To Levira, now free from pain.

The day of the funeral, I drove Jama to Lambert airport. Its main terminal was designed by Miabu Yamasaki, a series of groined concrete shells and vaults whose joined curves make wings. Overhead, glass floods the terminal with light, suggesting the emptiness of the sky. Nowadays, the architect's idea of spaciousness is compromised by security checks, stalled lines of passengers who suggest not birds in flight but stuporous cattle on their way … to where?
The Twilight Zone
fluttered through my mind. ‘To Serve Man.'

Jama frowned, shouldering her bag. “What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing.”

We curved to the line at the security gate. Jama's eyes and mind were already in L.A. for more pitching, networking, voice-overs. It was hard to talk, but I finally did. “Jama.”

“Huh?”

“The last couple of days. With Margot. You did good.”

She absently nodded. Our line moved quickly. “You can do something, kiddo. Something I didn't see in you.”

Jama eyed me cautiously. “Yeah, that was a gotcha.”

“You could go to school. Make yourself better.”

Her disdain was reflexive. “And be a nurse?”

“Would it be that bad?”

She looked away. We were bathed in light from above, a real Saul on the road to Tarsus light, but nothing happened.

“Look, Mom. I'm not you. I don't want to be you. Well, maybe in a script. But supernurse?”

“Don't be me. Be what's good inside you.”

She shook her head. “Margot spoke to me. About the money. She said she'd pay for Rasheed, but not for
Lallah Rookh
. She said she couldn't. That you can't buy a dream.” Jama's tone was her usual
sang froid
, but I detected a twitch in her eyes at an elephant denied, and the face of the girl in the shadow box, enigmatic, and unobtainable.

A rubber-gloved guard at the checkpoint motioned to Jama. She advanced.

“Jama!” I called. She turned. “We were a good team.”

For a moment, I almost saw her smile. “Yeah. We were. So long.”

She walked through the checkpoint, an entrance framed like a raised sarcophagus. I recalled Lindbergh's concerns, wondering if our conquest of the skies would make man too arrogant, that the vision of flight might draw us from living a mortal life. More travelers streamed past me as the light warmed and made me white. I thought of Dad, alone in his jet, defying gravity. Of Lindbergh's troubled musings of aviation becoming commercialized, losing the miracle of air travel and the aviator's solitude above the earth … do the gods retire as commerce and aviation advance?