by Steven Clark
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.
31
Bear Robe
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?
A cloud moved. The bright light became thick as limestone. Dad faded as Levira returned, and Jama melted into the restless waves of travelers, not looking back. I turned and walked beneath the vaulted wings of the terminal. Two hours to the funeral.
Requiem aetermam dona eis, et lux perpetua luceat eis Domine.
As one, the organ and choir sighed in lamentation. Margot had insisted on a Latin mass, and considering the boodle she had contributed to the Church, the Bishop could hardly refuse. Latin, a language long ago dropped by the Church and now only sung at St. Francis de Sales, whose tall steeple towers over the South side, was intoned in mystic richness.
In paradisum deducant te angeli
The unadorned wooden coffin seemed at odds with the magnificence of the glittering mosaics overhead. But it was what she wanted. I glanced at Rainer, the stern puppet master who controlled every moment of the funeral, fulfilling Margot’s wishes. His regency would end at the cemetery.
Saul and I sat next to Terri and Pierre. Phoebe, Terri’s daughter, had flown in, and in contrast to her slutty appearance at the dinner party last fall, wore a sedate if close-cut dress as she sat next to her mother. The mayor and other mourners sat behind us, the quick taking a back seat to the dead.
Pierre’s eulogy was kind and thoughtful. There was no ‘celebration of life.’ No bluesy music nor hand holding, nor bagpipes droning Amazing Grace, just dignity and pensiveness. Very out of fashion.
Phrases, not full sentences or thoughts, came to me as I studied the coffin. The end of Chateaubriand’s memoirs:
As I descend into eternity, crucifix in hand.
To Levira, now free from pain. His Mysterious Majesty.
The presentation of his court of love and beauty.
Why the Veiled Prophet’s court language and its long-ago television pageantry? The robed men in costume beards, the Prophet on his stage prop of a throne, the endless parade of debs in their black and white glory? Because things were coming full circle. Robes, stilted language, heightened music; a funeral as a coming out ball, where you make your debut to eternity.
Chorus Angelorum te suscipant et cum
Lazaro quondam paupere aeternam habeas requiem.
Calvary cemetery sits across the road from Bellefontaine, the Catholic counter to Protestant repose. There were three other funerals that day, so the cemetery bustled like a terminal of mortality. Among the requisite statues of Our Savior and Our Lady stood the Desouche tomb; well-scrubbed white contrasting with late Lenten grass green as a billiard table. Above the tomb’s entrance were bas-reliefs of Desouche mere and pere, dignifi
ed in their heavy necks like a pigeon’s ruffling. Above them stood an angel.
“They paid a bundle for him,” Terri whispered to me, “came all the way from Italy. Great-grandfather had a good year in the mines, so he got a topnotch angel.”
The angel almost recalled Bessie, with her vaguely familiar pose, but that didn’t surprise. That pose was first used at the Monumentale cemetery in Milan, where Luytie’s Italian flame modeled. She was a generic angel. But so many of our great loves and passions are of the second-hand.
A sudden warm breeze ruffled the priest’s robes as he sprinkled holy water before the tomb. It wasn’t normally done. You had to bring your own holy water. Rainer furnished it. Phoebe laid down white roses as the coffin was carried in. A sad-eyed Kelly laid a colorful bunch of lilies.
The angel perched on the roof, fashioned in Bernini’s style of flowing robes and hair, bare arms, one hand grasping a cross, looked down, head cocked, studying us. Waiting. Prayers offered to Margot faded into the clear Marian sky, empty except for the contrails of a jet leaving a pencil-thin line of white against the deepening blue. Contrails are bad, we’re told; polluting. Conspiracy theorists warn they put secretions in them to control us. Yet to me, it’s a beautiful vision of flight, recalling the little girl who looked up to see the trail from her daddy’s jet as he flew overhead, finger writing in the sky.
Saul took my hand, his gentle squeeze telling me to watch as Phoebe crossed herself along with Terri. Pierre nodded, hands clasped.
“Phoebe’s getting a crash course in being a Desouche,” he whispered.
I nodded, seeing the family surrounded by a flock of well-wishers. Kelly prominent, sad, and drop-dead gorgeous.
Pierre glided to Saul and me. He’d aged since our first meeting last fall, eyes and folds around them sadder and wiser. No longer a soap opera star, he seemed ready to play himself. I looked up. The beautiful pencil line had fluffed into a fat worm.
“I think there’s an engagement.” Pierre indicated Phoebe. “Once her metrosexual significant other smelled a fortune, he’s cleaned up. She’s expecting.”
“Is that so?” I replied.
“So it goes on,” he said sadly, seeing this cycle of life unbroken. Pierre paused, then, hands in pockets, looked beyond the tomb. “I’ll be leaving town soon, but I wanted to ask you, are you familiar with the Chatillon-DeMenil mansion?”
“Indeed I am,” I said. It was one of the last antebellum mansions in St. Louis, almost torn down when Interstate 55 was built. In riverboat days, the front yard touched the river. Henry Chatillon was a trapper and scout, friend of the Desouches. The mansion’s elegance is one of the city’s small gems, now a social jewel for weddings and events. Located amidst the dirty brick boxes of abandoned breweries, it’s Blanche DuBois rubbing delicate shoulders around a ring of Stanley Kowalskis. “Why do you ask?”
Pierre’s smile was wrinkled and intimate. “Among all the period furniture and carpets, portraits, there’s one of Chatillon’s first wife. The Sioux woman he kept out west.”
“Bear Robe.”
Pierre’s eyes widened, apparently surprised I would know the woman’s name.
“Pierce showed it to me when we went to a wedding there. He loves it.”
Pierce, whose loosened tie had made him a seductive target for all the single women at the wedding, had led me into the house, champagne flutes in our hands. Outside, the bridal party spread out on the April lawn like spring dandelions, the magnolia tree fragrant and pink. Children in formal dress played hide and seek in front of the mansion’s pillars or climbed the porch’s New Orleans-style fence. A string trio oozed frothy Mozart. Inside, he led me past the usual displays where guests murmured and gossiped, speculating on the lives of the rich and famous long dead. We trooped past them and headed upstairs to the attic. The smell was musty. In its hall, he stopped at the portrait. He took a sip of Champagne and stared at it in silence.
“I can’t get enough of her,” he said finally.
My nod at the portrait was kind, but distracted. I had hints I’d promised to drop. “You know, Elaine and Alma made inquiries about you.”
Pierce nodded, the corner of his mouth upturned in a crooked grin. “It was hard to ignore them. Alma … Chin?”
“And Elaine Vesta. Hospital babes. They’re in the market.” I plucked a piece of lint off his lapel. “Sorry if I’m playing yente.”
“They’re both lookers. Didn’t you tell me Elaine was married?”
“Divorced.”
“She still looks married. She should work on it.” He pointed to the painting. “It’s so ambiguous. The Mona Lisa can’t compare to it.”
Bear Robe.
She was a daughter of one of the chiefs up the Missouri who Chatillon traded with. Cohabitation with Indian women was done to satisfy tribal alliances and male needs. I guess female needs didn’t factor into the equation. Her profile was fair with black hair pinned up, but the side away from the profile, her hair flowed like a wave of ink. Opposites.
“It’s a death portrait,” Pierce observed, “her eyes closed, face down. To the left is her ghost, light like skim milk. See the bottom? That white horse is hers, and it was killed with her.” He smiled, looking up, pointing. “There at the far right, the horse gallops to take her ghost to Manitou. The background … look at it. All black, brown, and white. Lots of brown.”
“It looks unfinished,” I said, becoming drawn in by Pierce’s enthusiasm.
“Sure, of indeterminate place. To me, it’s space and time mixed together. It’s so un-Victorian. Almost impressionistic. Like a dream. As if Munch painted it. I’ll bet an Indian did.”
My heart swelled listening to my handsome and oh-so-wise son describe the portrait to me. At the bottom left corner was a small, somber portrait of Chatillon. Bearded, unlike his clean-shaven daguerreotype. Upriver, he didn’t shave. A wisp of white owl before Bear Robe’s nose was a messenger of death. A murky rainbow made a bleak ridge between Chatillon and the horse. Her exposed ear was a rabbit’s ear, a sign of the rabbit. A good luck animal for her family.
“All the faces,” said Pierce, “remind me of those old photos … you know, psychic photographs of spirit guides used in seances. Bear Robe is alive. Bear Robe is dead. Bear Robe is everything.” He smiled. “Relativity. Or Schrodinger. An equation on canvas.”
I studied the dark colors, the brown that was so like the muddy Mississippi. “It … grows on you.”
“I met someone,” he said abruptly. “In Berlin.”
I turned toward him, studying his face. “I see.”
“Her name is Antje.” He kept looking at Bear Robe.
“What’s she like?”
“She digs up bodies.” A smile painted itself across his features. “I think I’m in love.”
“Then your son and I have something in common,” Pierre said, bringing me back to the present. “I love that painting, too. I researched it, and yes, Pierce was right. Almost. We think the artist was Karl Weimer. A German who painted here. Chatillon was illiterate, but he knew what he wanted. We believe Weimer painted it exactly as Chatillon directed. Poor fellow must have been confused at all the Native American symbols, at not being allowed to do a ‘proper’ portrait with all the tinkly stuff in the background. But Chatillon loved Bear Robe, and wanted to remember her and her world.” Pierre sighed. “The painting speaks to me.”
“They always hid the portrait upstairs,” I recalled, “upstairs or in a nook. Keep the Indian woman out of sight.”
Pierre’s laughter complimented the warm sun lapping over the cemetery, and in that moment I was glad I had found a brother. “Exactly,” he said. “It’s pure. Odd. So un-St. Louis. Chatillon married into a rich, French family. He almost married into ours. He had to keep Bear Robe’s portrait out of sight, so he wrapped it in sheepskin and hid it in the attic. Eventually the attic was sealed up, and when they almost tore the house down. In 1964 when they chopped up the city for that damned highway, an electrician discove
red the portrait. Since Chatillon guided Frances Parkman to Oregon, and Parkman recorded Bear Robe’s funeral, it’s a historical artifact. It’s really the best thing about the house. It connects St. Louis with the West. Fur and exploration. It’s like a portal, and yes, your son was so right about the portrait’s commingling of spirit time and place.”
I nodded, enjoying Pierre’s enthusiasm. “Pierce always wanted a picture of it.”
“That’s the odd thing,” Pierre continued. “It’s hard to photograph. They’ve tried. The colors are too dark. It’s almost as if it’s protected by some sort of Native American magic. Apparently some wouldn’t let themselves be photographed because they thought you were stealing their soul. Maybe a piece of Bear Robe’s soul is in that painting, and we shouldn’t photograph it.”
I nodded, recalling Bessie in her shadow box. She’s hard to photograph as well, the interior clouded and murky at times. The true spirit of St. Louis vague, like half-remembered dreams. Bessie and Bear Robe are true sisters.
“After all that rumbling over Corn Mother, it’s good to remember St. Louis has Bear Robe. From a myth to a real woman. A dream replaced by a true love story.”
“I wish I’d met Pierce. We could have talked about this.”
“He showed it to his wife when they were here. When you and Terri were hiding from us. Behind your lawyers and the restraining order.”
Pierre sighed and looked away. “I am sorry about that, Lee. We were afraid. I guess.”
Saul, hitherto silent, spoke. “Not afraid anymore?”
Pierre nodded. “I want to build an Ashram in Colorado.” Shyly, his hand smoothed his jacket. “I met a woman there.”
So, Pierre had a honey. He hadn’t mentioned her at all. I liked the way his eyes lit up, as they had when he reveled about Gesshoji.
“She’s kind of into the soil. No artificial fertilizer. Nothing using oil. We sniffed each other out, and I wasn’t sure. My heart was set on the Orient. Then I felt like the rich man seeking poverty, truth, a younger woman …” his eyes were soft. “She’s younger, but not by much. She’s part Irish and Native American.”