Magnolia City (4 page)

Hetty headed for the banking quarters, glad her father’s bank had been one of the first tenants of the building. Just walking through the lobby made her feel flush. Everywhere she looked, there was some flourish, some elegant inlay—“four million dollars of Esperson oil money!” her father liked to boast with a kingly wave of his hand—lavished on every last detail.

Once inside the banking quarters, Hetty walked up to a teller cage and dropped her handbag on the marble counter. She pulled out her black leather passbook.
C
ITIZEN’S
B
ANK OF
S
OUTH
T
EXAS
flashed at her in embossed gold letters. She opened it. Inside,
Esther Allen
was written in elegant calligraphy beside the words “In account with.” This had been given to her by Kirby after her coming out, along with a stipend of thirty dollars a month. All she had to do was present this at one of the tellers and she could withdraw as much as she needed for spending money each week. “Don’t want a daughter of mine doing without,” he told her and Charlotte.

“Five dollars, please.”

“Of course, Miss Allen.” The teller entered the amount under the withdrawals column, balanced the account, swatted it with a rubber stamp, and scribbled his initials. Fawning over her, he handed the passbook back with five crisp new dollar bills tucked inside. She gloried in the whole ritual, the gold letters, the name
Allen
written in swirls of calligraphy that swept her right back to her iconic ancestors, John Kirby and Augustus Chapman Allen. Across the banking floor, she could see her father enthroned at his desk beside the stainless steel vault.

Hetty made her way to the back of the tellers’ cages and waved at the coin boy, Lonnie. He opened the gate and admitted her into the inner sanctum of the banking floor.

“I’d like to see my father,” she told him.

“Yes, ma’am.” They dodged a cart of ledgers rolling by on wheels as he led her up to Kirby’s wide walnut desk. She sat down and looked across at her father, knowing better than to try and kiss him in front of the staff. He’d brush her off with a whispered
“Decorum!”
Barking an order at a teller in the vault, he pivoted around, far too stout for the desk chair that groaned underneath him.

“Princess!” He flashed her a quick smile, then shouted, “Lonnie, how many bags of coins have you rolled this morning?”

“Four, sir.”

“I would have had six done by now. Speed it up!”

“Yes, sir!” Lonnie scrambled back to his station.

“He can’t keep up with you, Dad. You were the best coin boy ever.”

“I set records that have never been broken!”

“And you never let anyone forget it.”

“Never.”

A bookkeeper drew his attention away for a moment. Hetty glanced around at the bustle. Although Kirb had a private office in back, he rarely used it. She always found him out here, manning this command post in the war of affluence. His ears seemed to crave the dissonant music of money changing hands, the clacking of adding machines, the tinkle of coins in the Brandt manual cashier, the snap of bills being counted. On his desk sat his Edison stock ticker with the ticker tape streaming down to the floor and curling in a pile. Next to that, two pictures in gilded frames: the famous one of King Edward in his ceremonial robes and Kirb’s wedding portrait, with Nella as the perfect Gibson Girl.

“By the way, Dad,” Hetty said once he turned back to her. “I was telling a friend how Mr. Esperson got his start.”

Kirb squinted at her. “Why this sudden interest in oil? You usually act bored when I talk about it.”

“I guess your little girl’s growing up.”

“About time. Well . . . tell your friend, the first thing he’s got to do is get himself a lease in an oil field. Esperson had one right up on Moonshine Hill in Humble. That was the easy part. Then he had to talk a banker into loaning him money.”

“You?”

Kirb shook his head. “Union National.”

“So it’s just that easy? ABC?”

Kirb’s paunch shook with a deep belly laugh. “Easy? He drilled one dry hole after another. Four or five as I remember.”

“And they kept giving him money?”

Kirb shrugged.

“Why?”

“They loaned on a man’s character back in those days.” Then her father crooned his favorite words: “Before the war.” A new light came into his gray eyes as he gazed over her head into the far reaches of his memory. Kirb nursed an unwavering nostalgia for the lost years of his youth, not a golden age in his mind but a silver one, polished and genteel, an Edwardian order untarnished by the hot breath of modernism. “That was before
your
generation, of course.”

“Oh, we’re just finishing the job your generation started.”

“No, no, you can’t blame this on us. We knew the rules.”

“Rules?” Hetty waited while he stared her down. “For instance . . . ?”

“For instance, not bringing liquor into the cotton carnival.”

“Well, thank God you were there to restore order promptly, Dad. Civilization can continue.”

“But then your mother finds you in a hotel room with that fellow?”

“Well, not alone.”

“Don’t split hairs with me, Esther. You know it’s not allowed. All your mother and I are trying to do is maintain some decorum. For your own good.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Dad. I guess I’m like Lonnie. I can’t keep up with you.”

Kirb chuckled. “You might be surprised. I got into my share of mischief when I was at Rice. But I knew how to keep up appearances. Your generation goes too far.”

“Let’s just say we have a different idea of how far too far is.”

“Be careful, Esther. That’s all I ask. Remember, you’re an Allen. People are watching.”

“It’s a deal, Dad. Now . . . how about I make it up to you?”

Kirb’s eyebrows lifted in expectation.

“What if I found you the next Mr. Esperson?”

He laughed derisively. “These boys today?” Leaning back in his desk chair, Kirb unbuttoned his suit coat and snapped his striped suspenders. “I haven’t met a young man in years I’d bet on.”

“Well, Dad, maybe you will.”

Maybe you already have,
she thought.

The next afternoon, Hetty planned her strategy for sneaking out to meet Garret. She peered down the hallway outside her room and saw at a slant Nella’s
postigos,
ancient colonial doors from Mexico with little barred windows too high up to peer through.
That means she’s home,
Hetty thought. If Nella left the apartment, the
postigo
doors were locked; only she and Kirby carried a key. No one saw what was behind those doors, not even her best friend Lockett. As far as Hetty knew, Lockett had never been that far down the hallway.

Hetty strolled into the kitchen and came back into the drawing room carrying a glass of water. Nella sat in her black-enameled armchair cutting the golden twine off a package wrapped in fine linen rag.

“Oh, Aunt Cora,” Hetty said, recognizing the carton. Every few months, Nella’s only sister would ship her four bottles of a mysterious liquor without any label on it, nestled in raffia.

“Yes, it came in today’s post.”

Hetty strolled back into the shadows where she could only see her mother’s hands, light glinting off the bottles as Nella raised them from the box. She immediately opened one. Hetty breathed a sigh of relief. When these packages arrived from San Antonio, Nella would sit here for a day or two sipping out of a snifter, getting quietly drunk. She held her liquor well—most people wouldn’t notice any difference, but Hetty would. Her mother started going adrift, staring off into space and humming to herself old ballads in minor keys. Scraps of golden twine would litter the floor. Kirb would join her when he got home from the bank. Dinner would be late. Then it would all be over until the next bottle was opened. Hetty smiled, edging her door closed as she heard the first splash trickling into a nearby snifter.

An hour later, Hetty threw on a long strand of pearls, grabbed her shoulder bag, and walked through the drawing room to the front door. From the armchair, Nella looked at her out of lidded eyes. “Where are you going?”

“For a fag.”

“Don’t let your father catch you. He’ll be home soon.”

“He knows I smoke, Mamá!”

Once she escaped onto the esplanade that stretched out before the hotel, Hetty exhaled fully. This was her favorite spot in all of Houston, where the two great boulevards of the city flowed together like destinies meeting. Main Street surged up from the heart of downtown and collided with Montrose Boulevard, which slanted in at an angle to form a wedge of land Houstonians liked to call the Cradle of Culture. Here rose the Corinthian columns of the art museum, the walled mansions of Shadyside, the triumphant arch upon which Sam Houston mounted his magnificent bronze horse. Everything came together in a huge traffic circle that rotated around a sunken garden. Hetty liked to stand down there, alone at the axis, watching the carousel of cars swirl by from all directions. Only a few honked their horns, but everyone saw her.

She descended the steps and strolled among the sago palms and formal rows of flowers, watching for a creamy sports car to appear. She lit one Lucky. Then another. She glanced toward the museum, its deep blue shadows reminding her of the show of modern French art held there in January. When she’d glimpsed her first Fauve painting, it was as if a film had been peeled off her eyes.
Les Fauves:
the wild beasts! such deconstruction! such streaks of color! “I want to live with this kind of intensity,” she’d told Winifred, as they browsed among the burning canvases. Doris Verne and Belinda had trailed behind, each girl choosing a favorite quote about modern art from the wall copy accompanying the exhibit.

Hetty ground her butt under her heel, smiling at the memory. More cars wheeled by. She was about to give up waiting when a long burgundy brougham entered the traffic circle and started revolving. The driver wore a Panama like the one Garret had on yesterday. Hetty dashed across Main and walked up the center of the esplanade that led into Hermann Park. The car stayed on her tail and finally pulled up to the curb.

“Excuse me, madam, could you direct me to a place called No-
Tsu
-Oh?”

When she recognized the voice, she almost smiled, but caught herself and kept on walking. “You’re pronouncing it wrong. The accent is on the first syllable.”

Garret shifted into first, following her at low speed. “Sorry.
NOTE
-Su-Oh. Can you get there from here?”

“Not really.” She looked at him, almost tripping over a crack in the sidewalk. “So is this what you do? You’re a chauffeur?”

He laughed. “Would madam like to be driven somewhere?”

“I’m on my way to the lagoon, actually.”

He slammed the brakes on and was outside the car, doffing his hat and opening the door. “Allow me,
please.
”

Hetty shuffled her feet. Praying that no one was spying on her, she stepped into the sedan and felt the door shut with finality behind her. Inside, the cab was all fragrant leather and polished wood, complete with a Tiffany panel lamp. Garret taxied onto the green at the far end of the lagoon, parking the car and throwing his door open to catch the evening air. Light tinkled on the water like fingers across piano keys, and long strings of tree shadows were pulled across the grass, humming with darkness.

“There oughta be a little panther piss in here,” he said, climbing in and reaching into a side pocket on the door. “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” he said, pouring into crystal glasses from a silver flask. “Canadian.”

Hetty glanced around again to be sure no one was watching, then reached out. They clinked glasses, and he proposed a toast. “Here’s to clandestine meetings in the back of a brougham. May we soon move on to bigger and better things.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You could go on giving me rides in your cars for quite some time. You seem to have so many.”

“It’s a weakness of mine. I love automobiles.” He pointed out some of the luxury features of this particular model. “But the ride’s more fun if there’s a destination at the end. Like the roof at the Rice Hotel for dinner and dancing—say, on a Saturday night?”

“Pour me some more of that panther piss,” she said, her face going hot. “I think I’ve just been asked out by a strange man from Montana.” She couldn’t look at him.

“You have,” he said, opening the flask, reaching for her drink, and topping it up. “And the stranger hopes you’ll accept because you look more beautiful than ever when you’re blushing.”

He held out her glass. She kept her eyes down as she reached for the drink and started taking bigger sips than she’d intended to. Her nose caught a whiff of men’s cologne, a curl of lime. She could feel him watching her. By inches, she let her gaze unravel, first to the rich leather upholstery, then to the wide pleats on his trousers that led to an alligator belt that led to crisp white sleeves rolled up over tanned muscular forearms. Then she met his eyes. He was watching her in the shadows of the compartment without smiling or blinking, his blue eyes liquid and entrancing under black lashes any woman would butcher babies for.

Nella’s right,
she thought.
The eye is a sex organ.
She looked away, her fingers fidgeting with her necklace.

“I like your pearls.”

“They’re okay,” she said, letting them fall. “What I really want is a double strand from the floor of the Sea of Japan.”

“Fine. I’ll get you some.”

“You’ll have to strike oil first, mister!” She stretched out, crossed her legs luxuriously so that her skirt came sliding up over her rouged knees. The leather seats were so soft and fragrant, she wanted to rub her cheek against them. Through the windshield she watched the golden sun slowly being engulfed in a stand of blue pines, like a lantern being dipped into water. “I’m afraid I can’t go out with you yet—not legally, anyway.”