Rubout (34 page)

“You’ve got some explaining to do, Mayhew,” I yelled, running after him.

“Can’t stop to talk,” he said. “My beeper just went off. Gotta run.”

He did have to run. Because when I caught up with him, I was going to get an explanation of little Sheila’s statement. Where did she get such intimate knowledge of my car? Not from me. I couldn’t see Mayhew talking about Tampax with a girlfriend.

He evaded me for a week and a half, but finally, I found him at Uncle Bob’s one morning, eating his waffle. I plopped down at his booth and said, “Okay, Mayhew. Confess. You know who attacked my car, and it wasn’t any Vander Venter.”

Mayhew turned the color of the Strawberry Dee-Lite Waffle. But he told the truth. “It was Sheila,” he said. “She’s . . . uh . . . a little possessive.”

“I saw the way she grafted herself onto your arm,” I said.

“She’s insecure. You have to understand her position,” he said.

“Missionary?” I said snidely.

He looked wounded. “Francesca, I was honest with her, just like I was honest with you. I said I loved my wife and could never marry her. Sheila said she understood, but I guess she really didn’t. She gets a little jealous sometimes. She lives over on Hartford, and she recognized my Harley parked in front of your place that afternoon and thought I was in Mrs. Indelicato’s store. She went in to see me. But Mrs. I said I wasn’t in the store. Then Sheila heard some . . . sounds from us on the steps and . . . uh . . . thought she knew what they were. She left without making a scene in front of Mrs. I, but she brooded on it all day, and that night she took a cinder block to Ralph.”

Jeez. I’d had all the disadvantages of a fallen woman and none of the fun. I didn’t belong in the adultery game.

Mark was contrite about what Sheila did to Ralph. “I’m sorry, Francesca. I meant to tell you before this. It’s my responsibility. I’ll pay for the damage.”

“Forget it, Mark,” I said. “My insurance covered it.” My insurance covered all but five hundred dollars. But I didn’t want any man to pay for Ralph.

“I feel guilty,” he said. “I’ve hurt your car.”

“Ralph wasn’t hurt. He came back better than ever. In fact, he’s perfect.”

Almost perfect. But I wouldn’t find his one flaw until months later, on the first warm day of spring. Then I turned on Ralph’s air conditioning and heard a rattle. It sounded like a small piece of window glass was trapped inside. I could have taken the car back and had the rattle removed, but I didn’t. I keep it there. When I get too hot, the rattle reminds me to
cool off. And keep my hands off other women’s husbands.

That happened in March. Soon St. Louis was in a green and glorious spring. When the dogwoods were in bloom, I took the afternoon off and went to see Sydney. She was buried at Bellefontaine Cemetery, in North St. Louis. The
Gazette
liked to say that some of the city’s oldest families were buried there, but I figured we all came from old families, or we wouldn’t be here, right? Certainly some of the city’s richest and most notorious families were planted in these hills. Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri’s first senator, was with the silent majority at Bellefontaine. Adolphus Busch, the beer baron, did not bury his pride even in death. His mausoleum says
VENI VIDI VICI
. He came, he saw, and he conquered . . . what? The boss’s daughter? Adolphus didn’t found the Anheuser-Busch brewery. He married Eberhard Anheuser’s daughter, Lilly.

The gloomy and arrogant monuments were softened by the white clouds of dogwood. They looked beautiful in the spring sunshine. Sydney was not buried with the family that killed her, but with her own people. A pink dogwood wept over her pink granite stone. In a vase was a single white rose. The rose was fresh. It rested just below her name and dates, against the inscription: “Beloved Mother.” Her son must have done that.

I owe you an apology, Sydney, I thought. I misjudged you. I thought your life was silly and useless. I thought I was superior to you because I have a career
and I am a local celebrity. But your son loves you. And you loved him. I could not put “Beloved Mother” on my mother’s tombstone. I could not love her. And she could not love me. You have something that I will never have.

I stood by Sydney’s grave for some time. I heard the birds singing, and the grass being mowed in a distant section of the cemetery, and a car going by. But from Sydney, there was nothing. No sign. No word. Beloved Mother was enough for her.

Sydney’s son continues to honor her memory. So far he’s stayed off the drugs. I saw him recently at Has Beans, the Clayton coffeeshop, but this time he was a customer. The kid looked good. The dark shadows were gone from under his eyes. He seemed like another twenty-something, maybe a little more serious than most. Hud told me that the cop scared him into virtue when he picked him up in that South Side alley. “I was afraid my father wouldn’t bail me out if I got caught,” he told me. “My heart was pounding so badly I could hardly breathe. I knew a city cop would love to run in a rich kid like me. When he didn’t, I went back to Eric’s and collapsed. I locked the door and didn’t move all night long. I couldn’t believe I’d escaped.”

One month after his mother’s death, Hud went into drug rehab again. This time he made a serious effort to stay clean. He’s back in school, on a scholarship, in the top 10 percent of his class.

Hud’s going to need that degree. He won’t have a job waiting for him in the family firm. Investigators
discovered that his father, Hudson, through a series of entangled corporate ownerships, had been funneling his money into offshore banks to avoid Sydney. Alas, Hudson Senior had also avoided the IRS. The IRS settlement and penalties are said to be enormous. Brenda left him, I’m sorry to say, when Hudson lost his money. He had to sell his Ladue mansion and his mother’s home, along with the family’s personal effects, right down to the ugly silver tea service, now slightly dented. He tried to recover some money by suing the
Gazette
for damages when I dropped the vase, but the case was dismissed.

Of course, poverty for a Vander Venter is not the same as poverty for the rest of us. Hudson was still able to afford what I would call a nice home. In the Chevy Chase section of Olivette.