Magnolia City (51 page)

“It’s all he’s ever known. You’re asking us to give up the Old Houston.”

“The Old Houston? Jesus Christ, Mamá, there’s more to modernism than a couple of armchairs. Look in your art books.”

“Books? I don’t need books, Esther. I’ve been to Paris. To the salons.”

“But did you understand what they were whispering to each other in French? Art is a wrecking ball. Swinging on a chain. The Old Houston, and all it stood for, is demolished. We’re living in a Depression, in case you hadn’t noticed. We can’t afford these pretensions anymore.”

Nella looked around the room, a little lost. “But what would people think?”

“They might admire you. Show them what it really means to be gracious. Show them what a real Southern gentlewoman is like, a woman whose heart is kindled by kindness and compassion. A woman who loves her grandchildren no matter what they’re like.”

Nella stood and turned her back to her daughter, stepping onto the dais to sit at the
bureau de dame
. “I don’t know if I can do what you’re asking, Esther.” She removed her turban and placed it gingerly on a wire hatstand. She brushed her hair and gazed off into the great round mirror with eyes vacant and wounded. “What a terrible bargain my daughter drives. I don’t know if I can give up my place in society. I’ve worked so hard to earn it. No one knows what I’ve suffered.”

“I think I do.
Conocí a Tipo
.” Hetty sat at the foot of the dais and watched her mother’s face change in the mirror. She’d intentionally used Miguel’s nickname as if to say, “I know everything about your youthful
mal de amor
.”

Nella gazed off into the melancholic light of the mirror. “How dare you dig into my past. It’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is. He could have been
mi padre
.”

Nella snickered as if this was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “You know nothing.
Nada.
You heard a story, that’s all.” Nella smeared cold cream on her face and began removing makeup. “You think you can blame me for everything that’s wrong with your life? I did what I had to do. You were provided for. You always had Lina. Anyone can change a diaper and spoon food into a mouth. I was protecting you. That’s what I was doing. I shielded you girls from my despair because that would have been much worse.” She wiped her eye shadow off and dragged rouge off her cheeks. She looked older without her makeup. Dark rings emerged under her eyes. Lifting her lustrous hair off her face, Nella snared it with the teeth of a Spanish comb. She brushed at her spit curls mindlessly. “So don’t try to make me feel guilty, Esther. What if I
had
sacrificed myself to you? How do you think I would feel now? After the way you’ve treated me? Bitter, that’s what I would be. Bitter as wormwood. And now you’re threatening to take my only grandchild away from me. You know how that makes me feel,
m’ija?
”

“How?”

“Glad that I made the choices I made. There were places I wanted to go, great ships that docked at the Port of Houston that could take me as far from Texas as I could get. I knew how to hunt all right. I sought beauty and brought it home. Art from Paris. Glass from Venice. Silver from England. The good stuff. I don’t regret a thing. Not one. Not even Tipo.”

“I do.”

“What’s that?”

“I regret we weren’t closer. I love you, Mamá, in spite of it all.”

“If you love me, you won’t take my grandchild away from me.”

“Have you heard anything I’ve said today?”

Nella slapped the hairbrush down. “I don’t know what you want of me,
m’ija
.”

“Mamá, just look at me.
See
me.”

Nella glanced at her for the first time in the mirror. “All I see is a poor woman whose husband has left her and is now saddled with a child she’ll have to raise alone.”

“That’s all you see? That’s all you want for me?”

“Be fair, my child. You could have been living like a princess. That’s what I wanted for you.”

“I don’t want to be that kind of princess. I’d rather be . . . a handmaiden . . . to the Empress.”

Nella shot her a puzzled look in the mirror.

“La Madonna Morena.”

Nella threw back her head and chortled. “That old
madre
’s tale? I didn’t realize you were so naive.”

“Cora says she’s the only real goddess we have in America. Not an import like Diana.”

“Oh, please. Mary miraculously appears to a humble Indian just when the Spanish were trying to convert millions of Aztecs? How convenient.”

“But the tilma?”

“That relic? It was painted by an artist named Marcus. Didn’t Cora tell you?”

“Then why has it lasted four hundred years?”

Nella sprayed perfume into the air. “Now
that
I would like to know. My Chanel suits rot in the closet.” She set the bottle down and swayed her head back and forth in the fragrant mist. She caught Hetty’s eye. “I’ll never kneel to the Virgin again. And I can’t imagine why you would.”

Hetty thought for a moment, then said softly, “I want to learn how to love people.”

“Why? So they can break your heart?”

She and Pierce left by the back hall. Lina gave her a long hug on her way out, confident Garret would turn up soon. “I’m more determined than ever to find him,” Hetty said, “to prove my mother wrong.”

“You will. Don’t give up,
m’ija.
As we say in Mexico,
‘Donde menos se piensa, salta la liebre
.
’”

When you least expect it, the rabbit will jump.

Hetty drove through downtown on her way to the Heights. When she pulled up to the intersection at Main and Texas Avenue, the sign spelling out
MAJESTIC THEATER
in electric lights was still strung across the street, but many of the bulbs had burned out, leaving the message JEST EATER. When the signal turned green, Hetty edged forward, checking out the sale signs in the stores. She pulled up in front of Foley Brothers and sat idling at the curb. She had lots of cash with her. She could go in and buy herself a new dress. But when she looked at the fashions in the windows, she lost her enthusiasm. Everything for fall had a threadbare look to it: simple black dresses, boring wool coats, and hems that skirted the ankle. Silk was out; cotton was in. “Washable” was blazoned across almost every sign.
Is this what it’s come to?
she wondered.
Streetlights turned off and fashion gone dark?

Hetty turned left onto Preston Street to head over the bridge. Above the truck, high up in the humid air, Houston rose into a crimson sky. The sun smoldered in the west like a fire that refuses to go out. Down Travis, she glimpsed the cupola of the Esperson Building floating over the town like a temple in the clouds. She couldn’t believe such a magnificent edifice was up for auction. She thought for a moment about stopping by the bank and giving Kirby one last visit with his grandson but remembered that the bank was closed. Even if her father were still there, she would be locked out. She gassed the truck onto the bridge.

Hetty lugged Pierce up the worn carpet on the stairs of the old Victorian mansion that had been parceled off into rooms. She always knew what the boarders would be served for supper—the smells collected up here in the stairwell outside Pearl’s room. Tonight the table would be spread with meat loaf, cabbage, and—Hetty sniffed again at the mouthwatering aroma of piecrust baking—probably cherry pie. Pushing open the door to Pearl’s room, Hetty found her scrunched up on the bed pulling thread through the hem of a faded housedress.

“Come on in, y’all, I’m trying to get some mending done here.”

The room was dim, curtains still barricaded against a barrage of afternoon sun. A circulating fan droned on the dresser, but still, the room was stifling. Hetty sat on the rumpled davenport and cuddled Pierce in spite of the heat.

“I found the envelope,” Pearl said.

“You weren’t supposed to find it till we left.”

“I was looking for my sewing kit.”

“I hope you’ll keep it this time.”

“Only ’cause of the other thing you said.”

“About Odell?”

“I won’t let myself believe it’s true.” Pearl talked through pinched lips, holding straight pins. “Is he really coming back to me?”

“Looks like it. Save the money for a down payment on the house you two will need.”

Pearl took the pins out of her mouth. “All right. You know best, hon. How did you find out?”

“There’s so much I haven’t had a chance to tell you.” Hetty caught Pearl up on her trip into the brush, the meeting with her mother, and Cora’s advice about finding Garret. “ ‘Call him to you,’ she said. ‘The universe is run by intention, not chance.’ ”

“Have you tried that?”

“Yes. I keep whispering under my breath,
‘Come find me, Garret. ’
Has he called here?”

“No, hon, I’m afraid not.”

“He’d know to call here or at Ada’s.” Hetty glanced at the black telephone beside the bed, its silence falling into her heart like a chill. “I guess it’s not working. Cora must be wrong.”

“Now hold on. You ain’t done what she said.”

“Yes, I have. I called to him.”

“No, I mean the second part. The universe is run by—what did she call it?”

“Intention.”

“There you be. Intention. Don’t sit around waiting for him to call. Go find him.”

“But where?”

“Well, I don’t rightly know.” Pearl thought for a moment. “I reckon you got to guess
his
intention.”

“You mean why he left me and where he would go?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, let’s see. He’d be thinking about the future, about what he was going to do next. Maybe he’d go back to Electra or Desdemona.”

“Old girlfriends?”

“Oil boom towns. Or maybe he’s just off somewhere, drinking himself into a stupor.”

Ouch!
Pearl sucked on her finger. She had pricked herself on the needle. “My God,” she spoke out of the corner of her mouth, “I know where he is.”

“You do?”

“When you said drinking, that reminded me.” Pearl took the finger out of her mouth and examined it for bleeding. “He used to go off for a week at a time. Said he had to do some thinking—I figured that was an Irish expression for a binge.”

“Where would he go?”

“To The Hammocks.”

“Oh . . . your place on West Beach.”

“Would disappear there for days. He still has a key.”

Hetty felt a surge of hope. “Can you show me how to get there?”

“No. But I can tell you. I think you should go there alone. You and Pierce. Take Garret’s son to him.”

Hetty wanted to leave right away. She longed to escape Pearl’s stifling room and drive south until the Gulf breeze streamed in gusts through the shattered window of the Wichita. But Pearl talked her out of it.

“You’ll never find The Hammocks in the dark.”

“I can’t bear to spend another night away from him.” Hetty felt the blood blossoming in her cheeks.

“You must be coming into season.” Pearl laughed. “Go take a cold shower. Y’all got plenty of time to paint the front porch.”

Once it had cooled down and Pierce had fallen asleep on the davenport, Hetty finished reading the letters from Garret’s mother. Pearl continued her mending on the bed. In a letter dated February 14, 1929, Hetty found the reason he’d been hiding the correspondence from her.

And in a second letter dated April 25, she read:

Other letters acknowledged receipt of additional money orders from those spring months of 1929, totaling over two thousand dollars. Hetty crumpled the pile into her handbag and lit a fag. “Pearl,” she said.

“Yes’m.”

“I’m just heartsick.”

“Bad news in them letters?”

“I’ve misjudged my husband.”

“I told you Mac was good as gold. I always said that.”

“I thought he gambled away thousands of our mescal money. I was wrong. The whole time he was sending it to his mother, Arleen.”

Pearl chuckled out of the corner of her mouth. She removed the pins. “That’s an Irishman for you. More loyal to his mother than his wife.”

“I don’t care. This makes me want to see him all the more.”

Hetty could hardly wait to get off the next morning. She spoon-fed cereal to Pierce while she ate breakfast with the other hand, then slapped on a diaper and dressed him in his sailor suit again. “We’re going to the sea,” she said. She loaded all her possessions on the truck with Pearl’s help and gave her friend a warm hug, patting her spectral arms. “Thanks for telling me where my man is.”

“You brung mine back to me, too.”

“No more thorns, okay?”

“Don’t worry about me.” Pearl pushed her into the truck. “Go on now. You know what I always say—you got to live it up to live it down.” As Hetty drove away, Pearl was there in the rearview mirror, waving all the way down the block.

Hetty was on the causeway by ten a.m. As she left the mainland, the haze of morning evaporated into a sky turning a deep tropical blue. The bay waters under her lapped with loneliness. She rolled out onto Galveston Island, where rows of palms had been planted to welcome tourists to the Playground of the South. Their fronds billowed like women lifting their skirts. Here in the subtropics, everything simmered with yearning and heat.