Passion


Miss Ima was 81 when she enlisted me for one of her
projects. She was driven to her projects in a plain
Plymouth wagon by a suited servant, who served her and her
luncheon guests a wicker basket of fresh-made fare, tasty
but nothing special as might be expected of a grande dame
of Texas culture.

She had to be a picky eater, she grinned, had to maintain
her delicate health, no food prepared by anyone except her
own cook of 45 years, and who went along for long trips.
She told me that ever since her young miss world trip to
Europe at 18, where she became deathly ill on rich food,
she limited her intake to simple dishes, and -- she became
serious at this point -- and a unique concoction
administered by her physician.

Once, when I awaited a session in her Bayou Bend mansion,
the doctor passed on his way out. He nodded to me, with a
faint smile, and briskly walked on holding a very small
flat case, tight against his breast. He had orange hair
and freckles.

Miss Ima rang for me to come up to her bedroom. I went in
and she was in bed, propped up, a light at her side. She
had a wonderful smile, which surprised me, since she was
customarily reserved and businesslike. She asked me to sit
and tell me about the work I was doing for her. She was
almost girlish, certainly much gayer than at the project
site where she surveyed the work from her gray wagon, had
lunch and left, excusing herself due to easy tiredness and
the long trip back to Houston.

A few weeks later the peculiar bedroom scene was repeated
but with an astounding change. Somone rang for me to come
up and there I found the doctor at her bedside adjusting
intravenous tubes, one each of which ran from her arms
through an adjoining draped doorway. It was obvious that
a blood transfusion was taking place. I stared.

Miss Ima's eyes were closed and the doctor motioned me to
silence and signaled to wait. He completed what he was
doing, removed the apparatus and tubes from Miss Ima and
wiped and taped the punctures. He folded his syringe case,
the flat one I had previously seen. He rolled the
apparatus through the drapes, returned, nodded to me to sit
next to her, and left quietly.

In fifteen minutes or so she came slowly awake, said, hello
John dear, in the most alert and girlish voice, this time
more coquettish. She reached out to pat my leg, and said,
tell me what you did this week on our project, sweetheart. 
I made my report, feeling odd at her behavior, while she
looked at me with her bright yellow-toothed smile and
pinkly glowing wrinkled face.

Our next three sessions were similar, except that each time
the doctor rang me up earlier so that I saw more of his
ministrations. Miss Ima became increasingly intimate with
me, using terms of endearment and holding my hand, my upper
arm, my thigh. She asked me to call her by her preferred
terms of affection. She said her father called her, sugar,
which she liked most, for it was also the term used by her
sole lover at 18, in Paris, a jazz pianist, an American
black, who introduced her to heroin, to her love of
impermissable culture, her love of liberation, her love of
solitude, her unrequited love of young men devoted solely
to their art.

She confessed to me, as young lovers must of their vices,
that she received daily transfusions of fresh blood,
transposed from young volunteers who were paid well for the
service and silence, who were located in the adjoining room
and never saw the lady to whom they were giving life, nor
the doctor who dutifully injected the young miss's
concoction into the stream feeding her reluctantly dying
arteries of high passion.

We finished our work and parted, some months afterwards. 
I read much later that Miss Ima was horribly killed in
London when her cloak was snagged by a closed cab door,
dragging her to death, aged 89, even at this terrible end
on her way to a session of passionately supporting her love
of high culture. For me, the young-blooded miss in the
grande dame was a veiled seductress whose unquenchable
passion haunts me still, as it surely does others of her
used and discarded jazz-time lovers.

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March 12, 1995