Magnolia City (20 page)

“Now let me get you young people something to drink. I’m sure you’re dying of thirst after your long drive. What’ll it be? Iced tea?”

“Mother served me something the other day you had sent her. . . .”

“Oh, what was that?”

“A brandy from Mexico.”

“Vino mezcal?”

“Sí,
that’s it.”

“Aha! You’ve discovered mescal already. You youngsters
are
growing up fast nowadays. So mescal it is. You, too, Odell?”

“Please, ma’am.”

She dusted off some snifters and splashed a little golden liquid into them from a decanter kept next to the birdcage. Hetty suspected it was used a lot. “Let’s make that four then.”

She served them, then planted herself in the middle of a divan crowded with oversized cushions. Hetty studied her aunt as she curled up amid the sun-faded silks. Cora Beckman de Groos, in spite of her marriage to a gentleman of her German neighborhood, had never really assimilated into Anglo society like Nella. She didn’t hide her ethnicity but accentuated it with colorful accessories and dress. A silver necklace of coral spread across her black dress. She lifted her glass and waited for them to join her.
“¡Salud, amor, y dinero—”

They all took a healthy sip and let a collective sigh of pleasure escape.

“So let me look at you two newlyweds.” She gazed at them both for a moment, unflinching, appraising them. “I can see you’re in love,” she said, sipping. “Thank God. Too bad you had to elope, but it was probably the only way.”

“Mamá and Dad wanted me to marry Lamar Rusk, of course.”

“Of course. Had your life all mapped out for you, I’m sure. But you never loved Lamar. I knew that. Besides—” She whispered to Hetty, pretending that Garret couldn’t hear, “This one’s choice.”

Garret buried his grin in his snifter. They were all inhaling, taking their time, and letting the flames unfold slowly down their throats.

“You don’t sound like a Texan, young man.”

“No, ma’am. I’m from Montana.”

“Montana? Then I take it your family weren’t sheep farmers.”

“My father was a senator.”

“A senator’s son? Aren’t you a clever girl, Hetty.”

“I thought so. But Mother won’t even have us over.”

“Of course not. You eloped.”

“So?” Garret asked.

Cora asked in an aside to Hetty:
“Si sabe que eres mestiza, ¿no?”

“Sí,
he knows my grandmother was Mexican.”

“Well, there you go. In our culture, elopement is an unpardonable sin. We call it stealing the bride.”

“I didn’t know that,” Hetty said.

“Of course not,
m’ija.
You’ve been deprived of half your heritage.”

“Then is that why Nella’s so angry at me?”

“That’s part of it, I’m sure. As much as she tries to deny it, Nella’s still a Mexican at heart. Plus, my dear niece—you would have to go and marry a MacBride!”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Hetty asked.

“My sister has an old grudge against the Irish, I’m afraid.”

“Why?”

“Oh, let’s just call it a childhood trauma. It’s mostly because you eloped. You’ll be shunned until your first child is born then showered with forgiveness.”

“I don’t care what happens,
Tiíta.
” Hetty shrugged. “I had to get away from home.”

“You’re a true
norteña,
like me. We Ardras come from the north of Mexico, and we’ll be damned if anybody’s going to tell us what to do. And to make it more complicated, I’ve also been psychoanalyzed. Have you read Freud, Odell?”

“
Totem and Taboo
. A classic.”

“How about you, Garret?”

“No, ma’am,” he said sheepishly.

“Oh, you should! He’s all the rage right now.” She looked at him intently. “There’s someone here who trained under Dr. Freud himself.”

“Don’t they interpret your dreams?” Hetty asked.
What would they make of mine?
she wondered.

Cora chuckled. “There’s more to it than that, I’m afraid. It took four years.” She continued to peer at Garret.

“So?” He locked eyes with her. “Are you cured?”

“I no longer catch colds,” she answered, looking right through him. “And I know people’s secrets without being told.”

“Uh-oh, I’d better make my mind blank then,” Garret said, glancing at Hetty and Odell.

“You have nothing to worry about, my dear fellow,” Cora answered, smiling sagely. “What you think you have to hide is all on the surface.” She turned to Hetty. “And if your mother weren’t so shallow, she’d see that. Now that’s a woman who needs to be psychoanalyzed!” A black cat leaped up onto her lap. “Cassandra, my pet,” she cooed, stroking her. The cat mewed. “Yes, you know secrets too, don’t you?” She whispered into the cat’s ears, “Especially about the future.” Cora glanced at Hetty for only a moment, but it electrified her. “Enough about these arcane matters. What can we plan for your visit to Unsainted Anthony?” Cora rattled off an itinerary for them that would have taken days, but Hetty insisted they could only stay overnight.

“We’d love to pick up some of that mescal to take home. We’ve grown so fond of the stuff.”

“Tepoztecatl has touched you, I see.” Cora gazed at Hetty and narrowed her eyes as if debating something in her mind. She shook her head. “Your mother’s going to kill me. . . .”

“Then do it!”

“Okay. I’m sending you to meet Miguel. Mr. Delgado. He runs an ice house in the Quarter. Right on Haymarket Plaza.”

“What’s an ice house?”

“Oh, don’t you have those back home? They’re sort of like open-air cantinas. You just have to go and experience one. Miguel can tell you where to find the best brimstone bowl, too. There’s so much more to do here than in boring old Houston.”

Before they left, Cora gave them a tour of the house. Her pictures of
la familia
weren’t hidden like Nella’s, but openly displayed in clusters on ranch tables. When Hetty discovered Liliana’s wedding portrait, she stopped and gazed at it, the shawl glowing around her head like an aura.

“You should have that,
m’ija,
” Cora said and disappeared.

Garret and Odell followed the sound of a fountain into the back bedroom. When her aunt returned, Hetty caught the scent of a cedar chest. Cora carried something draped over both arms. “This is the
rebozo,
the shawl, your grandmother is wearing in that portrait.” She let it fall into Hetty’s hands like purling water, its long fringes cascading through her fingers.

“Abuela,”
Hetty whispered.

“When a
mestiza
weds, she is always given her own
rebozo
. This is an especially fine one from San Luis Potosí, made of Chinese silk.”

Hetty hung it on her arms and stepped up to one of the baroque mirrors to survey herself. It was cut very full, with the longest fringes she’d ever seen, the silk faded to a pearly antique white.

“Wear it around your shoulders,” Cora said, lifting it, “to show that you are a married woman, and men will respect you more. Mexican men, at least.”

“Gracias, Tiíta. Es tan hermoso.
I guess I get it because I’m the oldest.”

“Ha! I don’t think Charlotte would want it. I could never even get her to speak Spanish with me.”

Hetty then noticed a photo of two girls in sailor suits, sitting on the ground with their arms clasped around their legs, laughing. “Who are they?”

“Your mother and me.”

“Her knees are showing here,” Hetty murmured as if talking to herself.

“¿Perdóneme?”

“I just realized lately that I’ve never seen my mother’s knees.”

“And you never will. She always keeps them covered.”

“Why,
Tiíta?
”

Cora didn’t answer. She gazed at the photograph of the young girls, their hair pulled back in knots, and said, “Don’t ever ask her about it.” She turned and flashed Hetty a smile, saying, “Just go meet Miguel.” Then she roared out so the men would hear, “Let me show you my studio!”

She escorted the whole group into a long narrow room overlooking the river. Her recent works in progress startled Hetty: The quaint scenes of life in the Quarter that Hetty remembered had metamorphosed into something surreal—dreamscapes of haunting intensity.

“Your work has changed.”

Cora just laughed. “I can’t paint the Mexican market anymore. Not since Freud. And here’s my latest work. . . .” Cora said with a wave.

The huge painting on the easel, almost finished, had already caught Hetty’s eye: A girl hovered in the crucifixion pose, trying to hold heavy books in her outstretched hands. She stood inside a high wall, a prison overlooking the river, or maybe it was a convent because above it nuns swooped from a scarlet sky and only one window in the building blazed with hot light like someone couldn’t sleep. The nuns were not pious, Hetty noted. Their black habits flared like the wings of avenging angels.

“I call this one
Sisters,
” Cora said.

Just as they turned off North Flores and crossed over the bridge into the Quarter, the Angelus tolled. Shadows fell off things like black smoke and the last of the sun burned for a bright instant in the retama trees along San Pedro Creek. They parked the car on Milam Square and set out on foot. The men unbuttoned their collars and rolled up their sleeves, welcoming the cool breeze that was beginning to stir the hot, dry air.

With it came the sound of singing, sweet and melodious, somewhere ahead of them, so they wandered down San Saba Street and along Produce Row. The buildings were low and flat, but their insides spilled out onto the walkways from all sides. Color vibrated in the evening light. Strips of paper in orange and blue advertised
grandes ventas
—big sales—in every shop. Storefronts were a jumble of huge paper flowers, clay animals, striped serapes, and racks of papier-mâché Judas figures leering at Hetty out of the shadows. The scent of chili floated in the air from little hole-in-the-wall restaurants.

A dark woman standing in the doorway of a bookstore asked,
“¿Amorosas, señorita?”
When Hetty objected that it wasn’t Valentine’s Day, the woman explained in rapid-fire Spanish that these cards were imported from Spain to inspire romance on any night of the year. Garret bought two.

Hetty led them back toward the Haymarket, passing rows of chili stands crackling with mesquite wood fires and furnished with long tables lit by tin lanterns, then headed across the crowded plaza toward a sign crudely painted with the words
M
IGUEL’S
I
ZE
H
OUSE
—A
GUA
F
RÍO
.
It held a busy corner of the Quarter, its folding garage doors flung open on both streets to let in the night air and the thirsty customers.

“Let me do the talking,” Odell told them. “I’m used to dealing with Mexicans. We had some illegals working for us at Weems Moving and Storage. You have to use a lot of flattery with these people. . . .”

A jovial Mexican man joked behind a big red Coca-Cola cooler swimming with sodas and the Mexican soft drinks called
refrescos
. His handlebar mustache drooped under a black bowler hat, and he’d thrown an apron on over his white shirt and black vest. Hetty could see that Miguel’s was more than a retail ice outlet: It was a local meeting place, an open-air refreshment stand, and—if Cora was right—the closest thing the Quarter had to a speakeasy.

“Buenas noches,”
he hailed them as they walked in.
“¿A sus ór-denes?”

“Are you Mr. Delgado?” Odell asked.

He nodded cautiously, immediately suspicious of Anglos asking questions.

“We were sent by Mrs. Groos.”

His smile jumped back with the name. “Cora?
Ay, entonces es un placer conocerlos
.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Hetty spoke up.
So this odd fellow is the man my aunt wanted me to meet?

Hetty ordered a Tamarindo, but the two men pointed to green-tinted bottles of Coca-Cola floating in the melting ice. Miguel flipped a couple into the air and cracked them open on the side of the cooler so that foam came running down the side. He spiked the sodas with a bottle hidden in his vest.

Whatever it was hit Hetty hard and, after her second spiked Tamarindo, she realized that she’d better eat something soon. They had sat down at one of the tables. Voices around her began to echo, and the vapors that would pour out of the ice vault when the door was open began to look more and more like Judas dolls dancing by with fiendish grins.

When Miguel had finished slicing some watermelon for a large family, Hetty approached him. “Cora told me you would know where they have the best food around here.”

“
¡Sí!
You must have chili con carne. This you will only find in San Antonio. And in San Antonio, the best chili con carne is made by Señora Delgado. You come with Miguel—bring your drinks,
sí.
” He signaled to an old man dozing on a wooden cane, then led them out onto the street and down to a small wooden house with a door open to the night. Once inside, Hetty looked in vain for clues as to why Cora had sent them here. It was like many of the restaurants they’d passed earlier: a small, simple room crammed with rough wooden tables and benches and an altar to the Virgin glistening with votive candles against the wall. The other diners had finished eating and were sipping coffee. Miguel pulled out a bench for his guests to squeeze in. He shouted directions in Spanish through the serape hung over the door, removing his apron.

Shy and quiet as an animal, a woman slipped through. Her skin was darker than Miguel’s, and she kept her eyes averted as she brought them bowls of a steaming red stew, followed shortly by a platter of smoking tortillas freshly baked from corn masa. As she left, Hetty caught a glimpse of bare feet under her long black skirt. Miguel watched them taste the concoction, his smile exploding as they tried to cool their mouths with swigs of Coca-Cola.
“¡Jejeje!”
he laughed.

“¡Ay, que picoso!”
Hetty gasped.