The Saint Louisans (5 page)

“The bare space between the Arch's legs held the original city, and the Rock House was its oldest dwelling, built in 1818 by Manuel Lisa. A work house of the fur trade where pelts and skins hung from rafters or decked out on rough tables, prizes brought back from
terra incognita
up the Missouri and beyond. It was built of limestone quarried from nearby bluffs, rubble stone cemented and gimcracked together. It sloped up from the levee like a slice of rock pie.”

Another round of muskets boomed. Saul continued.

“In 1928 ‘Mom' Patinida took it over and changed it into a night club and jazz joint. Naughty songs sung by Rock House Annie attracted big crowds. It functioned. It was our past.” His voice lowered. “Then, the city killed it. Before all of this was the original city, and it was leveled.” Saul shook his head. “Oh, they were going to make the Rock House a kind of exhibit … embalmed history. Only the stupid assholes took it apart and forgot how to put it back together. Typical St. Louis genius.”

“Wow,” she said. So what was here?”

Saul looked to me. “What did she say?”

I cocked my head. “Who?”

“You know. Sara.” He turned back to the journalist. “This is Lee, by the way.”

“Oh.” The girl turned her cellphone on me. “You his girlfriend?”

“I squeeze back.”

We all laughed, and I continued. “He means Sara Teasdale, one of St. Louis's best poets. She wrote about the old riverfront.”

Saul and I often lounged before his fireplace and studied black and white photos of the levee, many grainy and unfocused like a myopic's squint, a collection of buildings with architectural gangrene. I spoke slowly, recalling what I knew by heart:

And old warehouses poured their purple shadows

Across the levee.

High over them the black train swept with thunder,

Cleaving the city, leaving far behind it.

Wharf boats moored beside the old side-wheelers

Resting in twilight.

“Wow,” the girl exclaimed, “that's pretty cool. You a poet?”

“I'm a nurse. I read a lot.”

“She's a brilliant nurse,” Saul said with quiet pride. “Every time I see her, I can't wait to get sick.” He returned to his serious, being-interviewed pose, a thoughtful, darkly handsome Heathcliff under the Arch. “All of this space could have been redefined and restored. We're the only people in the world who assassinate our history. It's like Cahokia.”

The girl nodded. “That was like you talked about last month, right? At the Native American teach-in. That old place in Illinois?”

“Yeah,” Saul said. “Cahokia. The first city in North America. By 1100, it had fifteen thousand people. About as many as London. Then, two hundred years later it was abandoned.” He looked off across the river, an excellent profile worthy of a coin.

“It just vanished. They walked away from it. Like we walked away from the riverfront.” He gave a Carl Sagan thoughtful pause. “Like we throw away our past.”

She was jubilant. “This is great stuff, Mr. Lowenstein. I have to meet someone in Soulard, then we should have this online next week.”

“Sure,” Saul laughed, “hope my hate mail increases. It only makes me stronger.”

“Hey, it'll get a ton of responses.” She shouldered her bag. “You won't believe the number of people who think you're a real commie asshole.”

Saul's gentle smile acknowledged this as a compliment. “What did they say in
Henry Fool
: ‘an honest man is always in trouble.' That goes double for us commie assholes.”

The girl strode off, cellphone already to her ear, like people do these days, ending real talk for telephonic as fast as possible. Saul took my hand.

“This is where you say, ‘Kiss me, you fool.'”

“Fool is optional.”

We snuggled like Robert Doisneau lovers. A long kiss, breaking apart as a barge headed past the oil refinery to the South curve; like a tear dropping off the eye.

“Thanks for the timely arrival, and the quote. I knew I could count on you to deliver a Sara for me.” Saul's tone softened. “You met Margot?”

“Yes,” I replied as we strolled. “I'm certainly intrigued by her, but there's something strange about our meeting. It was as though she was probing me. Like I was being examined. She seemed very interested in my life.”

“Come on,” Saul shrugged. “You're amazingly fascinating.”

“That'll get you sex tonight, but it's the way she looked at me. How did she know about me? Apart from your no doubt effusive recommendations?”

“Okay, I built you up. She did know you by name. I assume word got around.”

Saul stared at the cathedral, built in 1834, a prim box of neoclassical piety because the Church here couldn't afford the usual Catholic architectural oomph. In old St. Louis, the St. Louis of the levee, it nestled in a crowded street, but now on the open plain of the Arch, the cathedral was a prairie church, looking like a prop in a John Ford movie.

“Look,” he said, “she's a very decent, a kind and thoughtful woman. She wants to save the mansion while those kids can't wait to gut it.”

“That's kind of strong.”

“It's true. Margot is a real treasure, and they're jerks. I've been over to the mansion a dozen times.”

“Ah,” I raised an eyebrow, “I only thought it was a half-dozen. Do we have Sunset Boulevard here?”

Saul took my hands. “Hey. I'm not chasing after the old lady. She needs you, and she's worried about the mansion.”

“I know she and the kids haven't mended fences yet. Has she talked to you about them?”

“Only in mild off-the-cuff remarks. She never talks about Lucas. Terri? Hatred.”

“I saw her picture when I left. Veiled Prophet rig and all. She was really upset about the Ball in 1972.”

“Ah,” Saul smiled, “it was that night.”

“Yeah, when everything went crazy.”

Saul laughed. “Some woman broke in. From ACTION.”

“Action?” I frowned at the acronym. “So long ago. What did it stand for?”

“Action Community To Improve Opportunities for Negroes.'” Saul smiled.

“Wow. ‘Negroes.' Sounds quaint. Like ‘corset' or ‘self-abuse.'

Another crash of musketry. Crows cawed overhead and flew under the Arch.

“Yeah,” Saul said, “the woman slid down a cable and plopped right into the court of love and beauty. Sort of like old money and the revolution meeting Errol Flynn. A real Indiana Jane.” He started humming the theme to
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. “I don't think she wore a cape. She should have worn a cape. How many chances do you get to wear a cape?”

“I wear a cape.”

“Yours is a real one. Nurses are real. What did Marx say? ‘History repeated is farce.' When you slide down to unmask a veiled guy at a deb ball, history becomes Mel Brooks.” He settled down into his serious mode. “I'm glad you saw Margot. I'm sure she'll feel confident with your help. So she can take on the kids.”

“Remember, I'm there to help her die. I'm keeping out of the mansion thing.”

A square of paper spiraled down to us. We first thought it a scrap of kite, but it was another handbill. JUNETEENTH TOWNE! HOMES FOR THE PEOPLE!

Saul snatched the handbill and balled it up. “Funny how this follows me around.” He told me if built as planned, Junteenth Towne, would gut the
Desouche mansion in as thorough a manner as the poor Rock House. He led me to the car and said, “Let's have something to snack on. Sweet, crusty, and warm. Then I've got to check how the restoration work's going so we can start rewiring, and”—he rolled his eyes—“that urban planning conference in Lawrence next week.”

“Sure.”

“What about you?”

“I feel like a walk. Tower Grove.”

Saul stretched his arms, as if making his own Gateway Arch. “Great day for a walk. Kick a monkey brain for me and wave to the wedding guests.”

I nodded. Another crack of musket fire. Kites swooped above us like blue jays when you get too close to their nests.

Next door to Tower Grove Park is Shaw's garden, or, in its Sunday best, The Missouri Botanical Garden. Henry Shaw's elaborate Italian villa lies within, its plebeian brick covered in white stucco offsetting all the greenery around it like a castle in the woods of someone's fairy tale. The villa's square tower is charming, but unlike Montaigne in his tower, Henry would sit inside and scan the grounds with spyglass to his eye, making sure the staff weren't slacking off.

He was a man whose gentle expression had a
Wizard of Oz
benevolence writ all over it. Henry was charming, altruistic, and had at least two paternity suits brought against him. He was a wizard who got around. To the side of the villa is his mausoleum, a dignified cupola whose stained glass trim glows like a kaleidoscope when the sun hits it. Henry's statue sleeps, blanket tucked up to his chest, taking an eternal nap.

In the old days of my childhood, on the Saturday after the Veiled Prophet ball the reigning queen would sit in the upholstered and brocaded Victorian elegance of Henry's parlor and hold court for the children of St. Louis, offering a bit of a magic kingdom that predated Disney.

In Margot's drawing room, I recalled a photo on her table of her at this ceremony in single plumed tiara, a cream-colored gown at one with the stucco, happily entertaining a gaggle of kiddos.

So, Tower Grove has a bit of fey and magic within its long green box. I like to think its rubbed off on me, salving my soul as I walk through it. In
a strange way, she and I are connected in this park and that make believe kingdom. It was a mite troubling.

Tower Grove Park, 285 acres of varied trees, gazebos and landscaped vistas, has long been my sanctuary. Modeled on Kew Gardens by its creator, Henry Shaw, the park replaced the old Prairie de Noyers, reminding us, despite St. Louis's French origins and Midwestern cocoon, there is a dash of England in her toilet.

The early autumn air was fresh as I strolled by the Turkish pavilion, whose roof resembled a red and white pointed turban. Flecking orange leaves mixed with green as I recalled Harry Burke's words from 1923, that the park was a spinster, “Reclusive, almost, in her sheltered home, freed from the anxieties of toil … keeping herself unspotted, though with the perfume of other days about her”.

Other days, indeed. Past rows of brick flats that box the park, I remembered when I lived two blocks away. I became a ‘Southie' because the southside always had affordable flats, and with two children in tow, I couldn't be choosy.
Chez
Bridger was a Queen Anne style flat with arched front windows and a modified tower … just the thing for the Veiled Prophet Queen inside me. Its front had a broken frieze where the second floor windows notched into it. Saul explained this is a style unique to St. Louis.

The neighborhood was a mix of aging folk with
echt
German names like Putzelmacher or Kleindorfer as well as the usual grab bag of Hoosiers, St. Louis
patois
for white trash. The Germans carefully trimmed and hedged their postage-stamp-sized front yards with scissors-like precision. Hoosiers used theirs as a dumping grounds for auto parts and motorcycles in various stages of disrepair.

I'd take Jama and Pierce to Tower Grove, thankful the kids had a green space to romp in. We'd run, play tag, roll in leaves, snowball each other. I used the park as a first date for my lovers, to give them a test spin in its groves and gazebos. It was by the Druid circle of oaks that Saul and I clicked. Where the Gateway Arch is a space to be filled with the city's sense of being an historical passage, Tower Grove is more like a grandfather clock, ticking away memories.

For a moment, I lost myself in the bird's chirping and jingling tags as a dog trots with his owner slow jogging in spandex and Nikes. I strolled past a
row of ginkgoes. Their sickly sweet odored fruit was in full harvest, looking like drops of puckered flesh. I find its rancid odor attractive, a sweet and sour pork of the floral world. The fan-like leaves a pleasant mixture of bright green and pliant yellow.

A soft clunk came to my right. It was one of the Osage Orange tree's fist-sized fruit we call monkey brains. Pierce liked to play brain surgeon with them while Jama would smash them against a tree. All too prophetic of their futures.

I walked past the lake and grotto, a series of limestone blocks taken from the Lindell Hotel, a fashionable spot that burned down in 1868. As ducks glided back and forth, a wedding party readied themselves for photos capturing post-nuptial exuberance. It's a hotspot for wedding photos, as I told Doc Pickwick while we watched almost from the same location.

I sighed. Doc. He's still here, always will be here. Somewhere at a nearby ball field, cheers signaled an eighth-inning upset. Eventually, I headed back to my car, studying the pyracantha bushes near the grotto, blazing pumpkin orange against still green trees. The colors of autumn in Tower Grove. When it was a shoulder to cry on. Playing catch with Pierce, watching his reading change from Dr. Seuss to Salinger. My hopes for Jama. I'd wonder how Dad would have liked the park, what it would be like seeing him age instead of recalling his frozen youth, forever tied to a cockpit.

Walks upon walks taken, observing white blossoms at spring to snow-filled treks at sunset when weakened brass hit the pond, making it shine like melted gold.

It had been during a long walk in Tower Grove Park that I'd decided my marriage to Sky was finis and I told him to leave. That night. Now, strangely, along with the memories and faces of my family, I thought of Margot. There was something about her that was unlike my other terminal patients. She wanted something from me. But what?

A flush of leaves drifted down; orange, red, and yellow like shards of stained glass. With the sun's decline, colors turn to mud; the color of the Mississippi.