Magnolia City (19 page)

“Don’t know what you’re going to do! Is this a Houston girl I’m talking to?”

“And how.”

“Hey—you’re not acting like one. You know what they say about us Houstonians. If there’s no river to the ocean, we dig one. Why do you think we’re named after magnolias?”

“ ’Cause we’re white?”

“ ’Cause we’re tough, honey child. My dad always told me that magnolia flowers are pollinated by beetles, and their carpels have to be thick as bark so the beetles can’t eat them. ‘They only look delicate!’ he said. I’ve always remembered that.”

“Garret wants to wildcat, of course.”

“Well, there you go! You think Miss Mellie was born in a cupola? You know as well as I do—a gusher lifted her up there. She was just an Oklahoma farm girl who used to scrub her husband’s overalls by hand.”

“So I should buy some detergent?”

Doris Verne’s eyes burned with afternoon sun. “Het, you’re a daughter of the Magnolia City and don’t you forget it. You just give that husband of yours a little push!”

The following afternoon, Hetty stood mopping her brow in the back hall of the Warwick. The fetid smells that rose out of garbage pails grew unbearable in the soggy July heat. It was so swampy, she’d rather be a mermaid, she decided. She tied a knot in the twine, binding another box, and added it to the pile she and Lina had built through the afternoon. They had almost finished packing Hetty’s belongings, Lina carting them over to the freight elevator so Garret could pick them up later at the loading dock. Hetty was hot and thirsty. From the drawing room, the alabaster clock chimed five in the afternoon.

She handed the last box to Lina, who carried it on her head to the elevator.
“Gracias,”
she shouted before making her way through the kitchen and down the hall. She used the bathroom, then noticed that the
postigos
were unlocked. She slipped through and peered into the Mexican quarters. They were empty. She tiptoed in and turned one of the quarter-moon chairs toward the black-and-white photographs on the far wall. She sat and studied her grandmother’s wedding portrait, the enigmatic ancestor she’d never known.
What are you trying to tell me?
Liliana looked out at the world the way she had in Hetty’s dream, just before she changed the water into wine, the wine that had flowed out of a old-fashioned iron spigot.
Speak to me, abuela.
The eyes glistened, the wedding shawl flowed out of her hair, and her copper skin shone in the searing light of Mexico. All was quiet except for the stir of the ceiling fan. The warm room surrounded Hetty, close and moist, a wild dog’s ear lifted to catch a command uttered in Spanish, a distant cry.

Then it came.

Down the hall, the cocktail cart jingled as Nella wheeled it in from the kitchen. She was beginning her afternoon alchemy, the ice bucket crackling beneath her busy hands. Hetty pictured her sitting before the great Diana screen, cooled by a circulating fan, reaching for the bottles—

Of course. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t Hetty seen it? It was right there under Nella’s manicured fingernails. Her grandmother’s eyes seemed to close and then open again in confirmation:
the bottles of tawny liquor Nella’s sister shipped to her mother every few months.
The ones that came nestled in raffia, wrapped in golden twine, the ones that commanded a place of honor on the lowest shelf of the black-enameled cocktail cart.
Swish your hands in the water, m’ijita. You, too, can turn water into wine.

Hetty stood, turned, and walked down the hallway toward the marble floors of the drawing room. She wasn’t sure what kind of reception she would get, but she had to try. Nella was always more approachable after her first Manhattan.

“Mamá, could I have a drink before I go?”

Candlelight quivered across Nella’s face as she looked up at her daughter in surprise. She said nothing but, with a single contemptuous gesture toward an armchair, let Hetty step into an invisible circle whose rim until now had excluded her and Charlotte.

Instead she was asked, “What would you like?”

“I’d like to try that stuff Aunt Cora sends you from San Antonio.”

“How did you know about that?”

“I’ve seen you unwrapping it.”

“I guess my secret is out.” Nella’s fingers played Braille with the bottles on the bottom shelf until she found the one she was looking for. She poured a splash of nectar into a snifter and handed it to Hetty, swishing it on the way to release the aroma. “Here you are.”

Hetty took a quick shot and thought she’d gag. Going down her throat it was like molten lava running out of a crater.

Nella sighed with exasperation. “
¡Imbécil!
It’s a snifter. Here—let me show you how your ancestors drank it. If you hadn’t abandoned
la familia,
you might have learned this.” Nella poured some into an elegant old cognac glass with a gold rim, inhaling it first, then savoring every sip before letting it glide with its wet fire down her throat. Hetty followed her example and was amazed at how many different flavors unfolded from the golden sauce if you took it slow.

“What do you taste?” Nella’s voice came as Hetty sat with eyes closed, following the descent of the drink to where her stomach was starting to smile.

“A whiff of wood first, then wood burning—herbs on a mesquite fire—then a hot, sweet aftertaste, fruit sizzling with peppers. Then you swallow the whole fire.”

“Mmmm.” Nella smiled at her for the first time. “You’ve got a good tongue.”

Hetty tried it again. “This stuff grows on you. What is it?”

“Vino mezcal.”

“¿Qué no?”

“Mescal wine. The brandy of Mexico.”

“Really? And
Tía Cora
sent it to you?”

“Yes, bless her. She knows how much I like it—and you can’t get it here.” Nella poured them another round and, as they sipped, she seemed to warm up to the presence of her daughter at the cocktail hour. She told Hetty more about the wonders of this fabled
vino,
why it had been prized for centuries by the upper classes of Mexico and how it came to be imbued with such a varied garland of flavors. “They take the heart of the
agave
plant—the crown of daggers—and bake it for three days in a rock pit before drawing off the spirits. It’s still made the old way.”

Hetty couldn’t get over the novelty of drinking with Nella, growing more amiable by the minute. With her rich soft voice, she remembered for her daughter some of the lore that had been passed down in their family. As Hetty sipped at the
mezcal
and listened to the old legends of its gods, she found herself being transported. Maybe she’d drunk too much or listened too long to her mother’s hypnotic voice, but she sensed that the room was taking on a soft haze more golden than mere candle power, a radiance that was brightening her mind. When she heard about
Mayuel
—a mere woman who had first discovered the succulent heart of the agave plant and thus became the mother of all mescal gods—Hetty began to hear the voices of her friends giving her advice. She remembered how Doris Verne had chided her during lunch at the club: “You’re a daughter of the Magnolia City!” Then what Odell had said at dinner earlier in the week: “You don’t make money by working harder, you make money by using your imagination.” She hadn’t understood what he’d meant at all, but here—in the radiant air above the brandy snifters—his words took on a new significance. They shimmered across her vision, hovered in the air—
USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

“So where does
Tía Cora
get this stuff?”

Nella’s eyes glazed with a vacant, melancholic light. “There’s a man . . .”

“And where does this man get it?”

“
Quién sabe.
Cora knows—Guerrero, I think she said.”

“Guerrero?
¡No! ¿En serio?
”

“I think so.”

“Grandmother’s birthplace?”

“Sí. ¿Porqué?”

“
Ayinada.
Does it have wild dogs running through the plaza?”

“
Es probable
. What Mexican town doesn’t?”

“Sí. Como no.
Where is Guerrero?”

Nella tried to describe the location of the old colonial town: If the edge of Texas were a plow cutting into Mexico, Guerrero would sit right where the plow bit into the earth. “Near Zapata,” she said. “South of Laredo.”

In her mind, Hetty pinned a red flag along the sharp curve of the Texas border. “Mamá, would you let me have that bottle?”

“My mescal! You’re taking my mescal?” Nella pretended to pout. “Well, I suppose. Cora always sends four. Here—take an unopened one.”

Hetty held the bottle in her hands. “Do you think people will drink this stuff?”

“Well, you loved it, didn’t you? And there’s a more refined liquor made from blue agave that you can substitute for gin.”

“Really? Is it good gin?”

“Let me put it this way—the Aztecs used their word for
volcano
to describe it.”

“Oh, what word was that?”

“Tequila.”

Hetty didn’t wait for Garret to come and pick up her belongings, but caught a cab at the hotel entrance and headed straight home. In spite of the hot air flowing through the taxi’s windows, she shivered along the way. Her grandmother’s ghost had entered her with a chill, setting her mind tingling with possibility. She no longer saw herself lying quietly beside her husband, snagged in his bed. She saw herself in motion now, leaping like Diana with the deer, a huntress who was more than Mac’s whore. Perhaps she would adopt her mother’s deity after all. The ancestors had spoken. Hetty was to take her husband to San Antonio, be his translator, and lead him to hidden treasure. When she strode into the kitchen, she found Garret and Odell huddled in the breakfast nook over a crinkling map of Louisiana, looking for a quick route to New Orleans.

“Not east,” she announced triumphantly. “South.” She poured them some mescal and demonstrated how to drink it.

“Where did you find this cactus nectar, my dear, this elixir?” Odell asked.

“My aunt Cora sent it from San Antonio. She’s an artist and knows about these things.”

“And how long has it been since you’ve visited your dear aunt the artist?”

“At least six years.”

“Poor Cora,” he cooed. “Don’t you think you’ve neglected her long enough?”

Garret turned onto Flores Street, and they came right through the center of San Antonio, past the white dome of San Fernando Cathedral, which Odell claimed was Moorish. Hetty craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the river, but it was below street level, down in a shady crevice.

Next a street sign flashed in the corner of her eye, Dolorosa, causing a memory to arise from the corner of her mind. She’d been riding in the backseat of another car, six years earlier, sitting between her mother and her sister, touring the Mexican Quarter. The driver had put his arm out to turn left from Santa Rosa onto Dolorosa, when Nella had shouted out, “Don’t turn down this street!” and had gone as pale as a porcelain doll. Hetty pulled out her passbook and made an entry under
Balance: Dolorosa Street.

White columns and porticos began to drift by the window, bringing Hetty back to the present. She knew they were on King William Street in Germantown.

“Cora’s studio is on Washington, over by the river.” A mailbox glinted on a metal fence when Garret pulled up to the curb. The wrought iron gate shivered as Hetty opened it, and the wind came rustling up from the river through the giant pecan trees. She remembered filling her pockets with the smooth hard nuts when she’d come as a child to visit her stern grandfather, Anton. They would click together as she walked. She heard a distant sound of tinkling from the deep shade. Something in her stirred, ancient yet familiar. She spotted an old wooden sign she recognized—
T
HE
C
OSMOS
: W
E’RE OUT OF THIS WORLD
—and nothing else.

The path ended at a mossy rock wall, a trellis overgrown with some kind of wild grape. She caught the shape of a window in the rocks. It was a river cottage run wild. Then she saw the source of the tinkling she kept hearing. The grape vines had been hung with wind chimes every few feet: a flock of birds, a set of temple bells, and a spiral of harlequins. Everything seemed to be in motion, murmuring and ringing. She rang the caravansary bells.

Her aunt emerged silently out of the garden shadows, slipping off an artist’s smock. She was tall like Hetty, her height emphasized by a long black dress and equally black hair that was caught in a Spanish comb and streamed down her back. Silver frosted her temples and tinkled at her wrist. Under her feet, a half dozen cats poured by, mewling and peering up with green, unblinking eyes.

“¡Tiíta!”
Hetty called, addressing her with the affectionate Mexican title for Aunty that they’d always used as girls.

“
¡Sobrina!
My dear, dear niece,” she answered, hugging Hetty warmly and twirling her around to admire the crepe dress she wore, hung with a long sash. “Weren’t you in high school last time I saw you? And here you are married—I hardly recognize you. . . . Where’s that new husband of yours?”

“He’s in the car.” Hetty led her out, and a search party of cats followed surreptitiously in the leaves.

Garret and Odell must have been busy while she was at the house. The Lincoln had been freshly dusted and stretched out with lustrous elegance in the shade. “There’s Garret. And this is his business partner, Odell. I’d like you to meet my aunt Cora. Now let me see if I can remember your ex’s name,” Hetty said, “Cora Beckman de . . .”

“Groos. I made the same mistake my mother did—marrying a German! But I paint under Cora Ardra. Never mind our family history—I’m so glad you young people have come to visit the Cosmos.” She opened the gate and waved them through. “We’re out of this world!”

Apparently no one ever used the front door but entered the long, low-ceilinged living room straight off the veranda. She invited Hetty and Garret to take the old cracking leather wing chairs drawn up before an enormous stone hearth, hung with worn farm tools and old Spanish armor. Odell spread out with some ceremony on one of the sofas. Once Hetty sat down, many things around her looked familiar: aging, flaking mirrors in baroque frames, at least a dozen tarnished candelabra that would all be lit at night, faded rugs underfoot.