Magnolia City (11 page)

“Yes. Until the party at Bayou Bend. I’ll let you go to that with Lamar.”

“But why?”

“I told you Dowling was off limits. This is the last straw.”

“But we didn’t go to Dowling Street. I kept my promise.”

“No, you went to West Dallas—that’s even worse.”

“Why?”

“For God’s sake, Esther, wake up. It’s the red-light district.”

Hetty caught her breath and glanced over at Garret. “You didn’t tell me that, honey.”

“Of course he didn’t,” a gruff voice shot out from the drawing room. The two dark figures rustled ominously. One of them materialized as her father’s stern face, his gray eyes regarding Garret with chilling hauteur. “That’s how men like this take advantage of girls like you.”

Kirb came past Nella and clutched Hetty’s arm so tightly she whimpered. He pulled her away from Garret and stepped between them, massive. “Now, I’ll have to ask you to leave my home, sir. You are not welcome here.”

“Leave Mac alone, Daddy. Just leave him alone. It’s not his fault. Even if I’d known, I still would’ve gone. Besides—how’d you know where we were?” She glared at her mother. “Are you spying on me again?”

“Spying?” Nella spat out a bitter laugh. “That was hardly necessary. You were a bit conspicuous, my dear, being the only white girl there. We have a witness.”

She moved aside, and Hetty peered into the murk of the drawing room. The other person stepped forward into the light, but his face remained as dark as ever under the cream-colored brim of his straw hat.

It was Pick, his eyes never rising above the level of her feet. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said.

Then Hetty noticed Charlotte lounging on the sofa, witnessing her humiliation. “It’s not fair!” she cried. “You’re all ganging up on me.” She turned to hug Garret good night, but her father was still blocking the way, forcing him out into the hall. She craned her neck to search out his gaze. He was looking at her with such a burn of longing that her own eyes went hot in return, steaming with tears. Then the door slammed between them. She could feel him right outside, his heat radiating through the walls.

“Don’t leave me, honey,” she shouted. “Don’t leave me here.”

V
oices woke Hetty out of haunted dreams. She heard footsteps padding down the hall. For minutes, she refused to open her eyes. Then she sensed light. She looked over sleepily and saw morning sunlight already streaking across her orange and black draperies, giving her room an eerie glow. She stretched and rolled over to check the bank calendar she’d pinned to the wall months ago under a teakwood lantern. The last four days had been circled to chalk up what Nella liked to call her “moon.” She’d taught her daughters to track their monthly cycles like astronomers, though it was hardly necessary in Hetty’s case. Her ebb and flow came like clockwork and never slowed her down. But more important than that were the big red Xs across the days. Nine days of house arrest down, five more to go.

Today was Monday, June 25, the calendar said—the first day of the Democratic National Convention. Hetty had itched all weekend for this morning to dawn, knowing that her mother and sister would finally vacate the apartment for a few hours so she could telephone Garret. She hadn’t talked to him since she’d managed to sneak behind the telephone screen late one night. Hetty slipped out of bed and opened her door, then crawled back under the sheet and pretended to be asleep. She listened to the sounds out in the hall, the scurrying, the shouting, Lina’s mutterings in Spanish as she passed back and forth with blouses to iron or shoes to polish. A whiff of lavender floated into Hetty’s room. During her solitary confinement, she had been humming the words of an old song that Lina used to sing as she worked:
“Nunca me harás llorar.”
“You’ll never make me cry.”
“Nunca, nunca, nunca.”
“Never, never, never,” Hetty had chanted in her mind to help her hide her misery.

It seemed to take her mother and sister forever to get ready. Hetty grew drowsy but didn’t think she could sleep anymore, especially with the sun kindling such bright orange embers in her curtains. She could only melt a little in the haze, like stepping down many stairs into an unlighted house.

And then she was cold. There was a wind rattling and ceilings so high they seemed to disappear into the night sky. She wondered why she wasn’t in the hotel anymore. This was the inglenook that was built in at the bottom of the stairs next to the fireplace, but it frightened her because the fire had gone out and the whole house was drafty and cold. She began to tremble because no one came to kindle the fire, and the house was a thicket full of tangled furniture and frightening curios.

Then her dreams became memory. She remembered why the fire had gone out. She remembered the fog horns that kept thundering, like the deepest note on a organ, as an ocean liner passed like a great wall sliding through the Port of Houston, heading abroad. And her mother was at the top of that wall, waving down to Hetty, who stood so small on the dock beside Lina and who couldn’t wave back because she had to hold Char’s hand, and Char was crying because her mother was leaving them again and wouldn’t be back for months. But Hetty couldn’t cry—
Nunca me harás llorar
—because she was two years older and had to be sure Char didn’t fall off the dock into the water. Kirby said it was her duty to look after her younger sister.

At night the two of them would huddle in the inglenook and remember when their mother was home and would make them a fire before bedtime and tell them old legends by the light of the crackling flames. Nobody knows the peril of a house without a mother; only the children know. Hetty would lie there trembling in the dark, listening to the sounds of the house: Lina haunting the hallways singing a sad song in Spanish about the husband who’d left her years before, Lina’s door closing, the creaking of the steps when her father finally went to bed, Char’s breathing falling into sleep. She would curl up amid the smells of old fires long burned out. She couldn’t sleep until she’d managed to push the cold shudder out of her heart by singing Lina’s words softly, over and over, to herself—
nunca me harás llorar.

And then there were the spiders. Even though Lina swept away cobwebs daily, there were too many corners she couldn’t reach with her brooms. Because Kirby thought spiders were beneficial, he refused to have the old house fumigated. They were everywhere—daddy longlegs hiding under toys, little black jumping spiders on the windowsills, yellow orb weavers on the potted palms. Charlotte, especially, was terrified of them because of stories she’d heard at school: Spiders drink from your mouth at night, brown recluses hide in your clothing, wolf spiders travel in packs. After a spider sighting, she once sat in a chair with her legs drawn up and refused to walk across the floor for hours. It got so bad Lina took them to the library on McKinney Street to check out books about arachnids. They learned that their father was right: Most spiders were harmless and helped humans by eating bugs. There was only one they had to avoid: the shiny black widow with the deadly red hourglass on her abdomen. She was so venomous she would eat her own husband after mating with him. They read about all kinds of exotic specimens: peacock spiders, assassins, even spiderlings who turned and ate their mother after being hatched.

In spite of all Lina’s efforts, Charlotte never overcame her arachnophobia. Worse than that, she began to spin a web of her own as she grew up, becoming a tattletale to catch her older sister in a tangle of transgressions. This gave her a lot of power for an eight-year-old. She worked hard to maintain her status as Kirby’s little darling. She memorized all the rules out of
The Child’s Book of Etiquette
he had given them as girls, always making sure to brush her hair and don a freshly pressed smock by the time he got home from the bank. She never raised her voice in the drawing room, rose when guests entered, and always fulfilled her father’s requests with an adoring smile. Hetty, on the other hand, simply couldn’t be bothered with all these silly Edwardian rules. Her hair was always a snarl, she hurtled down the stairs two at a time, screamed with delight, and collected spiders in a old drawer out of a dresser. If she didn’t agree with an adult, she said so, and expressed her opinion freely. She was constantly breaking the rules, and Charlotte took note. At dinner every night, she would delight her father with a song she had learned at school, the A plus she had gotten in spelling, and the rules that her sister had broken that day. Lina tried to brush this off as just being Hetty’s high spirits, but Kirby often ended up frowning across the table at her.

Charlotte’s list of privileges grew, while Hetty was put under house arrest time after time. They argued bitterly when Kirby wasn’t around, and Hetty started withdrawing and spending more time with Doris Verne. Their roles became reversed: Hetty had stepped in as surrogate mother when Nella was away, but now Charlotte had transfigured herself into the scolding parent. Like those spiders Lina had told them about in Mediterranean countries—the heartless Stegodyphus hatchlings that ate their own mothers—Charlotte had turned on her sibling and begun to devour her. Hetty remembered a lithograph from Nella’s book on Odilon Redon where he drew a spider with spindly legs and a human head. Yes, that’s where this rattling wind was blowing, that’s where her dreams had taken her, into a whispering house of memories haunted by spiders. And all of them had Charlotte’s face.

When the telephone rang, it was like thunder in a glass sky. It brought her with a white jolt back to the hotel, pulling her out of bed. She dashed into the living room and dove behind the telephone screen, catching the call in the middle of the fourth ring.

“Hello,” she exhaled into the phone.

“Are they gone?” Garret asked.

Hetty looked around the dim drawing room. All was silent. She didn’t even hear Lina in the kitchen. “It looks like it. Honey, I miss you like crazy.”

“We’re getting married.”

Hetty held the receiver away from her ear for a moment while she caught her breath. “We are?”

“Don’t you want to?”

“Could you ask me after I’ve had a cup of coffee?”

“I’m serious. You probably can’t tell, but I am down on one knee. Will you marry me, Esther Ardra Allen? I’m in love with you.”

The marble floors were cold under her bare feet. They sent a shiver that traveled all the way up her spine. It was the first time he’d actually spoken those words. “I’m in love with you too, Garret MacBride.” Her lungs expanded their capacity three times as she spoke.

“Is that a yes?”

“My folks would never let me marry you.”

“Maybe if they knew my intentions were honorable, they would. I’m calling your father at the bank.”

“All right, see what he says and call me back. I need a minute to think about this.”

“It’s what’s behind the
postigos,
isn’t it?”

“Yes. I can’t agree to marry you until you’ve gone into that room.”

“It won’t matter. I love you.”

“Wait until you see what it is.”

“I’m calling your dad.”

Hetty went into her room and nestled her chilled feet in a pair of embroidered Chinese slippers, then sat back down behind the telephone screen and waited. Her toes no longer touched the marble floor, yet she couldn’t stop shivering.

It wasn’t long before Hetty heard the front doors bang open and saw Lina staggering through them lugging a box that she could hardly get her short arms around. She sat it down with a thud on the floor of the foyer and glanced in at Hetty half-hidden behind the telephone screen. “
¡Ay! Tanta agitación
. Lina, bring this. Lina, take that.
Ándale, ándale
—we’re going to be late.
¡Éso es el colmo!
”

“You can relax now.”

Lina came into the drawing room and sat down breathless on an ottoman. Her black eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why are you sitting by the
teléfono?
”

“You have to let me talk to Mac.”

“Sí, pero no,”
she said, shaking her head.

Just then a
braaang!
sounded out. They looked at the black phone, then at each other. Lina jumped up as Hetty reached out.
“No, m’ija, por favor.”

Hetty’s hand hung in midair. Another
braaang
. “Garret asked me to marry him.”

Lina gawked at her, speechless. A third
braaang
rattled in the air. When she caught her breath again, she cried, “Answer it!”

Hetty lifted the receiver and said, “Yes.”

“He hung up on me.”

“Damn him!”

“I didn’t even get a chance to ask. We’re going to have to run off.”

Hetty started shivering again. “Run off!”

“It’s the only way. They’ll never let me marry you.”

The shivers turned into goose bumps all along her arms. The idea of stuffing her clothes into a steamer trunk and just walking out of her mother’s marble prison made her tingle all over. Suddenly, her body ached for Garret. For his smell. She couldn’t bear it another minute. But then she thought of the
postigos
down the hall, their black bars locking things in—and out. “Not till you come over here.”

“When can I do that?”

Hetty looked at Lina. “I want to show him Mother’s room.”

Lina shrugged.

“I know you have a key.”

She shook her head again.
“¡M’ija, por favor!”

“Let me talk to her. I’ll call you back.” She dropped the receiver onto the base and studied the figure on the footstool. Lina was sitting there with her hands clasped tightly, her eyes downcast, a sad mask of torn loyalty stretched tightly across her brown face. Hetty knew that she was putting her dear little Lina into an unbearable bind, but couldn’t stop herself. The memory of Garret’s old kisses made her mouth move. “Linita, surely you understand. I can’t marry him until he knows the truth.”

“If the Señor Mr. MacBride truly loves you, it should not matter.”

“That’s what he says, but he hasn’t seen what’s on the walls in there.”

Then the phone rang again. Lina stepped over and answered it. She kept nodding her head and saying
“sí”
over and over in a solemn tone, then ended the conversation by saying, “Yes, Mr. Allen,
se lo prometo.
” She hung up and stood looking down at Hetty gravely.

“You must not talk to the Señor Mr. MacBride, and he must not come here. It is forbidden by your father.”

“But you don’t understand—”

“
¡Silencio!
Do you want your Linita to lose her job? To end up back in the jute mills? You heard me—he made me swear.” She placed her hand over her heart. “Do not make Lina break her word.”

Hetty pleaded with her, but she only threw up her arms, then cried in Spanish, “For stupid words, deaf ears,” and refused to discuss it further.

Her father must have tipped Lamar off, too, because three dozen red roses were delivered to the suite after supper. When Hetty tossed the lids back, she found blue velvet bags tied around each bouquet by a white satin ribbon. The note in the first box read: “Please slip this on if you find me ‘engaging.’ ” Inside the pouch, Hetty found an engagement ring studded with the largest diamond she’d ever seen.

“It should come with a warning,” she told her parents, who were hovering over her shoulder. “Do not observe with the naked eye.”

In the second box, the note read: “Don’t keep me waiting another minute, my Charmaine.” The reference to their special song made her smile. That pouch gaped open with the weight of a Chanel watch, its face surrounded with two perfect little circles of high-carat stones. Over a hundred diamonds, Hetty estimated, holding it up.

“I think someone’s in love with you,” Kirb chuckled.

The third box contained her invitation to Ima Hogg’s reception at Bayou Bend, along with the message: “Give me your answer Saturday night in the Diana Garden.” When Hetty untied the bag attached to those stems, a little silver quiver fell with a tinkle onto the dining room table, filled with miniature golden arrows. This made Hetty’s head swim. She picked up one of the tiny arrows, letting it pierce her heart in spite of herself.
I am yours, my little Lam!
“I wonder where he found that on the spur of the moment?” she said, heaping the treasures together in a pile so she could skirt the table and watch them flash with light and color as she moved.