The Saint Louisans (6 page)

It had been a busy morning checking my other patients, a circuit from nursing homes and hospitals. The mansion's pleasant, light-draped interior relaxed me. I wanted to linger in the foyer because every view was splendid, and I especially wanted to study the marble bust of a Grecian maiden whose style reminded me of Saint-Gaudens. Margot and Saul's quiet conversation stopped when I entered. On the table, a silver tea service waited with hot Darjeeling and scones.

“Lee,” Margot said with a smile, “your fella has been trying to seduce me.”

“I'll warn you,” I said as I slid into the velvet brocaded armchair, “he has his eyes on your marble.”

Saul laughed. “I was on my way out. I just wanted to remind Margot this Juneteenth Towne hasn't a chance.”

“He's my knight,” purred Margot. Saul's eyes wandered around the room like a kid in a candy shop.

Juneteenth Towne was named for June 19th, 1865, when blacks were freed from slavery. Vess Moot named this massive public works project, and he claimed he would redevelop the blighted and black north side. As Gaul was divided into three parts, so is St. Louis: the north, south, and west. Every so often, a plan is brought forth to save the north. The plan, every plan, stumbles. But if it didn't stumble, if it was built according to plan, Juneteenth Towne would demolish the Desouche mansion.

“I don't understand,” said Margot, “why that place has to be on these grounds?”

Saul shrugged. “Ask Vess. It's his nightmare.”

“I'm certain Pierre put him up to it,” Margot soured, recalling her son. “He wants to destroy me.”

Saul and I exchanged glances at this hint of the family feud. He leaned forward.

“Don't worry. We're not going to let that happen.” He rose. “Sorry to run, but they need me in the county. Another zoning demon to fight.”

Saul and I touched hands, and after he left, I got to work taking Margot's vital signs. She exhaled.

“I can't tell you what a comfort Saul has been,” she said. “When are you two getting married?”

“It's up in the air.” I heard her heartbeat through the stethoscope. “Is there any pain? Restlessness?”

“I do toss a bit. Woke up three times in the night.”

“I'll have Doctor Kemper recommend some over-the-counter stuff.” She nodded her thanks. “Cough,” I said. She did, and then as I recorded her vitals in her file, she poured me a cup of tea, the steam matching light-filled drapes by the open windows. It was mid-afternoon. Only the
swish
of the gardener's raking broke the stillness. Her eyes flashed.

“The history isn't that dramatic. After all, my family, the Rigauche, like the Desouches, were just tradesmen haggling over furs. In colonial St. Louis, even the Chouteaus went barefoot in summer.”

I enjoyed the sunlight dappling through a window, the quiet afternoon. Margot buttered a scone. “You enjoy peace, don't you, Lee? Like me. I insist the gardener not use one of those leaf blowers. Raking is more …”

“Peaceful.”

“Historical, it seems. This is how I want to remember things. Peace and quiet. You and me.”

Again, Margot's mysterious need for me. I sensed hesitation in her soft face, as though she were afraid she'd given something away. Margot reached for a box.

“I want to show you something. It was fished out of one of the family chests. Rainer was most helpful.”

I caught a glance of Rainer. His expression was anything but.

Margot placed a small metal cup on the table. It was three inches high, lacking a handle and luster. My fingers rubbed its rough body. “An antimonial cup. A family heirloom?”

Margot's smile was wide. “Of course you'd know all about it. Been in the family for ages. We brought it from Quebec. Before the family turned to fur, they were apothecaries. It was said people came to our door to use the cup.”

Antimony was held to be a magical element, thought by physicians in older days to have semi-magical powers. When John Winthrop sailed to found Massachusetts, he had an antimonial cup packed in his medicine chest next to powder said to be made from a unicorn's horn.

“The cup,” I said, “was a kind of placebo. It was said antimonial cups had nineteen cures.”

Margot leaned back. “Any good for cancer?”

I nodded and smiled, turning the cup in my fingers. “Especially when used with toads. One cure had you cut a toad in half and apply it to the cancer thrice a week.”

Acorns dropped in the yard. Margot looked away. “If it were only that simple.”

I set the cup down. “Have you thought of chemo?”

“Pancreatic is incurable.”

“The odds are high, but people win. If you fight back, it buys time.”

Margot shuddered. “No, I saw what it did to Mama. Chemo is horrible. I'm not afraid to die.”

Sirens screamed down Grand Avenue, then receded. “Do you want to die?”

“I've led a full life, Lee. When you're older, you become resigned to things; you want to make things right …”

She stopped. I stared. Rainer advanced, but her eyes warned him off. Margot sighed away what I assumed was a heartfelt plea, and returned to a gentle formality. “Dr. Kemper said I have until spring. Is he right?”

“It could be years.”

“Lee. Tell me.”

“Yes, that's about right. Look, if you want to see a therapist—”

“I've had enough of them with my children. All of those sessions and cant. At least a priest absolves you at the end. Besides, he's cheaper.”

She sipped tea, her glance warning me away from a deeper probe. I spoke. “Okay. Just know I'm here.”

Outside the window, the gardener clicked the gate shut as he walked under a canopy of lemon- and cherry-colored leaves.

“Philip and I had a good marriage,” she said. “There were quarrels. Indiscretions here and there, but on the whole, we worked things out.” She rubbed her thin knuckles and stroked her cane. Outside, a flicker winged onto a branch, its black- and gold-tipped wings and olive breast a delight, the red spot in back of its head almost a blood spot.

“We agonized over Lucas. He had such potential. All of those drugs …”

She stared, and I let her collect her thoughts. “I think it began when he was starting college. He'd acted strange. He refused to go with us to the ball.”

“Veiled Prophet?”

“Yes, the one on that night.” She closed her eyes briefly, remembering 1972 and all its awfulness. “When all of us returned, he was home, but was jittery. Morose. Kept looking out the window. It had to have been something.”

“Perhaps we should discuss that,” I said gently. “It was a long time ago, but when we lose people, it's never so far away.” Margot nodded, and I moved closer, seeing her eyes gleam with unshed tears.

“I believe in family karma. Every family has things that are passed on, that have to be resolved. The children, or a new generation, must solve them or accommodate them to the present reality, and Lucas—” She stopped and looked at me.

“I want to talk about you, Lee. Your cancer.”

Again, a sharp turn from my plan. “This isn't relevant to Lucas and what his loss means to you.”

“No more of Lucas. Please. Your cancer. I want to know what it was like. How did you manage it?”

She leaned forward, like a child ready for a story. Since this was what Margot wanted, and other people's cancer might help her to cope with hers.

“Back in my twenties,” I began, “an area of my cervix had been watched, then biopsied. Five days later, they told me it was malignant, but was small and quite localized. It was removed, and it takes ten years for this type to become invasive.” I shrugged. “No more babies, but my days as a brood mare were over. I could chuck my birth control pills.”

“At least it was caught,” Margot said in quiet satisfaction. “Tell me more.”

“I am going to expound on a curious phenomenon. When people heard I had cancer … when people hear of cancer, they're awed. To the lay person, more than any other diagnosis, cancer equals death. Their expressions … that hesitant look … it was as though I had undergone some kind of mystical experience and could no longer function like other people. At the hospital, none of the nurses discussed anything but the technical aspects of the surgery. Except an older one who had a hysterectomy and breast removal.”

“Yes.” Margot ‘s voice lowered. “What of the doctors?”

“Surprisingly, some were a little more open. Docs, you know, aren't apt to verbalize.” I sipped cooling tea. “You understand this was diagnosed at Barnes' Gynecology Clinic, so I was among friends.”

“But it's so awful. Imagining you with cancer.” Her voice almost choked. “Being cut off from life—”

This was getting deeper than I wanted, so I moved back to the light. “One friend of mine at the time leaned forward and asked ‘it is cancer?' in a good-grief tone of voice. When I said yes, but that they'd got it all, he went on to something else. A typical reaction.” I sighed. “Wow, I thought back then, ‘You've really walked in the valley of the shadow of death.'”

She brightened at my smile, almost reflecting it back to me.

“I'm so sorry you had to go through that, Lee.”

I nodded. “Now, let's talk about your fears.”

“You're so unburdened and honest,” she said with a mix of sadness and approval. “Please, Lee. I must ask you another question. May I intrude upon your privacy?”

“Intrude away.”

“What was your first marriage like?”

I paused and blinked. We were stepping far beyond the patient-caregiver relationship. An immediate thought was to say I had to go, and save it for another day, but her soft hand touched mine.

“We really need to discuss what you're going through,” I said instead. “I need to know. Please. Getting to know you better will be a comfort to me.”

A finger of sunlight cut between us. The gardener's rake swished again. My eyes closed. “It was the worst mistake of my life,” I said.

I leaned back in my chair and wondered what I'd gotten myself into. Why was Margot so insistent on hearing my tales of woe? My first marriage was definitely NOT something I wanted to rehash. I'd heard once that Mark Twain blamed the Confederacy's creation on too much reading of Sir Walter Scott, where southerner's OD'd on chivalry. My rebellion—and hence my first marriage—might have come from too much Veiled Prophet.

When Len Marbles roared into Dubourg on his motorcycle, he seemed to be the answer to my prayers. I looked up from my much-read Daphne du Maurier and took notice. Len was blonde, inarticulate, and very definitely cool. He'd gotten out of the army and was going places, but not until he deflowered a few virgins along the way. I was number four.

Aunt Mary and Spud took an instant dislike to Len, and in my adolescent mind they immediately changed into two old fogies trapped in Dubourg. I was a terrier straining at the leash, wanting to trot straight to Len, a Brando prince in tight jeans and a leather jacket. Clichéd, but such are hormones. Such is cool. After a living room chat where Aunt Mary's poise confronted Len's slouch, she forbade me to see him. Two hours later, I crawled out my bedroom window for a midnight ride on the back of Len's Harley.

That night, after I rolled over and lay by Len, he said, in a voice that drifted like loose sand, “So, whatcha think?”

It was at the abandoned chat dump, what we called the refuse of the mines. Slag heap is the usual term, but in Dubourg, chat dump sounds … well, romantic. We sipped the last of the six-pack he brought. Cans shone in the moonlight, ours and others from past couplings, some riddled with bullet holes. The dump was a popular spot for target practice.

I stretched, finding the sand soft and scratchy on my skin. “I think I'm a good lay.”

He crumpled his can. “Yeah. No shit.”

Wind hissed across the woods, followed by a distant pop of gunfire. The city dump was over the ridge, and guys liked to go there at night and shoot rats. Fortunately, we were at a higher elevation. Lust and guns. Such were the rural pleasures of Dubourg. I kissed Len, then frowned. He frowned back. I spoke.

“Hey. Why didn't you use the rubbers I got?”

Len laughed. “Oh, shit. I don't take a shower with my socks on.”

“I don't follow the logic.”

He lit a cigarette, and we shared drags, its orange light bright compared to the pale moon. “So, you scared?”

“Naw.” I sighed. “Just what happens?”

“Nothing.”

“If it does?”

“I gotta blow this joint. It's a bus stop with no bus coming. Like you. Hey: you and me?”

I crossed my legs and looked hard into the night. I picked up Len's leather jacket and breathed in the musky scent of leather and cologne. “Yes. Hell, yes.”

Aunt Mary looked at me like I'd gone crazy.

“You're out of your mind, Cindy Lee. Len Marbles has all the responsibility of a junkyard dog.”

“I'm seventeen, and I love him.”

Spud kept reading the sports page of the
Dubourg Post
. “Guy's a hotshot.”

I narrowed my eyes. “We're getting married.”

Aunt Mary glared at Spud. “Say something.”

He folded the page. “He's a drugstore cowboy. Use your smarts, kid.”

“Look,” I said, “we're getting married.”

Aunt Mary threw up her arms. “Why?”

Why? Because I'm an adolescent girl who's had her first taste of sex and can't get enough. Because Len looks like my dad. Len's Harley is like Dad's jet, and I'm emotionally insecure enough to want to bond to a father figure and act out against the pubescent displacement and abandonment by my mother. I wanted to be Veiled Prophet Queen, and marriage offered the bridal veil as crown of my womanhood.

Of course I didn't say that. I didn't even know that at the time.