Magnolia City

by Duncan W. Alderson

“You mean their well’s polluted? Why?”

  “You ever been to Settegast, ma’am?”

  She shook her head.

  “You wanna go?” he chuckled.

  And she had. In his rattling, smoking Model T, the doctor had driven her one afternoon up to the Ward that grew like a fungus along the eastern edge of the city. Settegast. In her crowd, the name was never mentioned, or if it was, only with a lowered voice. Now she saw why. As they drove along the dirt streets, Hetty looked out the window and saw rows of two-room shacks crowded together along muddy ditches. She looked for a street sign or an address, but could see none. Only rickety porches, rocking chairs, morning glory vines. The tin roofs were all rusty. Something rank haunted the air—old garbage perhaps, or rancid grease. Men in white undershirts sat on the stoops while out in the dusty streets, children played a game of tag the doctor identified as Chickamy, Chickamy, Crany, Crow.

  They stopped by the house of the Waller family, although how the doctor ever found it Hetty couldn’t imagine. First, he took her to the shed that served as a kitchen and pumped up some water. She cupped her hands under the spout. It smelled vaguely of sulfur. “I don’t suggest you drink it.”

  She glimpsed an outhouse in the back and heard the buzz of flies.

  “Rats outnumber folks here three to one,” the doctor had said.

  But you never see the rats, Hetty thought as the Packard turned onto North Innis Street. Rain pelted through the window. She rolled it up and glanced over at Pick. He was looking so handsome in his chauffeur’s rig, beaming as he pulled up in front of his house. He always drove the long black Packard into his own neighborhood with such pride, eager for his people to see how far he’d come up in the world. He kept the car buffed like a piece of fine jewelry—onyx perhaps, like his own black black skin—and displayed a natural charm and courtesy to all his passengers. As Hetty stepped out to go visit Pick’s family, she heard two things: her sister clicking the locks on the back doors and the rain drumming on tin roofs all up and down the street.

  When Velma Waller heard that Hetty was there, she rushed in from the kitchen shed, wiping her hands on her apron. Hetty studied her face. Not as gaunt. She asked her to call the children into the living room and have them line up on the braided cotton rug: Lewis in his overalls first, then Addie with her black shiny hair in finger coils, Minnie—barefoot and bold as ever—and finally, little Ollie with a pink bow tied in each one of her nappy braids. Hetty drew the four crinkling bags out of her slicker pocket.

  “What you got for us, ma’am?” Minnie asked.

  Pick patted his brash sister on the head. “Shush now.”

  “It’s all right, Pick—buttercream candies!”

  Minnie thrust her palm out, but Hetty wanted to feed them the first candy so she could have a good look inside their mouths. “Open up!” she ordered.

  An hour later, Hetty trailed Charlotte into the foyer of their suite at the Warwick Hotel. Shrugging their rain slickers onto the marble floor for Lina to hang up, they checked their makeup in the round mirror with the pink tint that was so flattering to a woman’s complexion. Nella had hung it there, of course. She loved tinted mirrors and had scattered them all over the apartment in various hues and shapes: blue trapezoids, immense rose-colored circles.

  Hetty’s knitted cloche rippled so close around her eyes that she had to tip her head back a smidgen in order to see clearly. But she didn’t mind holding her chin so high: The hat’s scruffy charm fitted nicely into her image of herself as a bohemian de luxe. She could pull off the look because she had her mother’s gypsy eyes. Charlotte, on the other hand, was Kirb’s daughter all the way: Even in the pink glass, her eyes had the metallic glaze that identified an Allen. Was that why he was so soft on her? Hetty wondered.

  A clock chimed five times, followed by the sound of ice cubes colliding against crystal. The two sisters stood at the threshold of the apartment, as if in the wings of a theater: Nella sat center stage in a pool of light, the room around her receding into its cool mirrored depths. Hetty could smell cigar smoke but couldn’t make out her father in the shadows. He was probably off in the study, taking his Saturday afternoon nap on the big leather sofa.

  Their suite was not like the other apartments in the Warwick, most of which were still choked with Edwardian artifice. No, Nella lived in rooms the color of eggplants or emeralds, preferring the drama of the darker shades. This palette had been chosen, Hetty remembered, after her mother’s edifying trips to Paris after the war when she’d come back reading Le Corbusier and preaching Purism. The resultant mise en scène was svelte and self-consciously sophisticated. Nella meshed with it perfectly as she awaited their entrance into the drawing room, ensconced in a highly modern armchair. “Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois,” she was fond of quoting from the master. Stacks of oversized art books crowded the black-enameled coffee table. Charlotte rushed in to kiss her mother on the cheek, chattering about Loew’s Theater and its elaborate Egyptian decor. “During the stage show, the lights change color in time to the music. This week, they’ve got twenty-five banjoes all playing at once—”

  “Twenty-five?” Nella made eyes at Hetty. Then she glanced over at an immense bouquet sitting on the ebony sideboard. Her black bobbed hair flashed in the lamplight, as streamlined as her furniture. Charlotte had her back to the flowers.

  “It’s called Banjomania. Mamá, you’d love it.”

  Hetty could see that the flowers were her favorites, tulips and anemones. Two ivory cards were nestled among the blossoms, one clearly bearing the crest of the Rusk family. So that’s why Nella keeps eyeing me, Hetty realized. Lamar has sent flowers.

  “You really should go to the matinee with us sometime. There’s more to life, after all, than playing mah-jongg in the women’s lounge.”

  Charlotte still hadn’t spotted the flowers. Nella grabbed both her hands, while flicking her eyes from Hetty to the bouquet, from the bouquet back to Hetty. She was wearing one black pearl on the little finger of her left hand and one white pearl on the little finger of her right hand. “You know I love you, don’t you?” she said to Charlotte.

  “Yes, Mamá—what’s wrong?”

  “Something happened today that we’ve been waiting for . . . a long time.”

  Hetty entered the room and followed the trajectory of Nella’s gaze. She had to see whose name was on the two cards. She plucked them out of the red and violet blossoms: Charmaine was scrawled across one; the other was a formal invitation bearing the Rusk crest that was addressed to Miss Esther Ardra Allen, Warwick Hotel. She opened the smaller envelope first:

  If I could catch the green lantern of the firefly, I could see to write you a letter.

  Love, Lamar

  She set the card back down on top of the envelope and opened the invitation:

  IT WOULD GIVE US SO MUCH PLEASURE

  TO HAVE YOU DINE WITH US SATURDAY A FORTNIGHT—

  She slapped that down, too, and headed for a divan buried under heaps of silk cushions. She burrowed into them and held one close to her breast like a shield.

  Charlotte had finally seen the bouquet. She extracted her fingers out of her mother’s and dashed over to the sideboard. She picked up the smaller card first and laughed. “Isn’t that sweet? Amy Lowell. Lamar’s such a dear.” Then she spotted the envelope. Hetty hugged the cushion closer.

  “Charmaine?” Charlotte looked at her mother, then at Hetty. Panic was starting to smolder in her eyes. She read the invitation, saw whom it was addressed to, then scanned the entire drawing room for the equivalent number of yellow roses, her favorites. “Did you put mine in my room?”

  Nella took a sip of her Johnnie Walker but didn’t say anything. Hetty couldn’t stop the victorious smile that spread across her face. A few beats thudded by. Charlotte’s panic flamed into searing knowledge. “He chose her!” She looked at Hetty with hatred scorching her eyes. Her face crumpled into tears, and she fled the room, fanning the pleats on her georgette dress. Sobs
ricocheted down the hallway.

  Nella followed, leaving Hetty alone on the divan to meditate upon this momentous event. She dug deeper into the silk cushions and curled up among them. She would have to accept the dinner invitation from the Rusks, of course. It would be rude not to, plus she would incur her mother’s deepest wrath if she didn’t. Nella had groomed her daughters carefully to become the well-bred wives of No-Tsu-Oh’s finest sons. Bloodlines were important in Texas, Hetty knew, whether you were talking about your cattle or your kinfolk. All her girlfriends were looking for men with the right pedigree, and Lamar had one of the best.

  Hetty simply couldn’t be bothered with such matters. What was important to her at the moment was that the Waller children had completely recovered from their pellagra thanks to the food Pick could now afford and the clean water he carted in by the gallon. When she told them to open their mouths wide for buttercream candy today, she hadn’t spotted a single canker sore. She considered that a personal victory, something much more essential than fighting with your sister over a beau. On the other hand, she was as fascinated as every Houstonian by the Rusk clan and their illustrious lives. Gaining entrée into the inner sanctum of that family would certainly have its advantages. And she was fond of Lamar and was sure she could grow to love him. If only she hadn’t met Garret! They were like two tuning forks, humming with the same dreams.

  There was commotion down the hall. Lina had been called in from the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate. Nella came back rubbing her temples and collapsed into an armchair. Her peach fingernails flickered as she downed the rest of her scotch. She was sitting before the centerpiece of the room, her prize find from Paris: a spectacular three-panel metal screen by Edgar Brandt depicting Diana on the hunt, a stylized deer leaping behind her.

  “You mustn’t rub this in your sister’s face,” she said.

  “Why would you even think that?”

  “I mean it, Esther. When Lamar comes to pick you up for dates, you must meet him down in the lobby.”

  Hetty waited for a word of congratulations.

  “Meanwhile, I’ll see that Picktown carries an acceptance over to the Rusks promptly. We’ve got two weeks. That’s plenty of time to find you a new dinner gown. In fact, you’ll need a whole new wardrobe. If this isn’t an occasion for shopping, I don’t know what is.”

  “How did you know it was for dinner?”

  “I peeked at the cards, of course. Well . . . how could I resist, Esther? This is the day your father and I have been waiting for!”

  Hetty studied her mother’s face, rapt in lamplight.

  “What makes you think I’m hunting for a husband? Diana may be your goddess, but I’m not sure she’s mine.”

  Nella shot her an alarmed look. “You can’t turn down an invitation like this. It could be our entrée back into Courtlandt Place.”

  “I know,” she sighed. Hetty felt a twinge of resentment that her decision would be freighted with so much Allen family history. The Courtlandt Place cutting was one of those private matters locked up in her father’s study. She knew Kirb kept the letter somewhere, stained now by whiskey. He occasionally pulled it out and read it to them when he’d had too much to drink. The trustees of the Courtlandt Association had signed it, names that were legendary among Old Houstonians: Carter, Taylor, Dorrance, Neville, Judge Autry, and of course, Chief Rusk himself, Lamar’s father. In polite language, they had turned down Kirb’s application to build a house there after he’d become President of the Citizen’s Bank of South Texas. “We regret to inform you,” the letter had begun. And Regret with a capital R had haunted her father for years after that. Regret that he wouldn’t come home to formal dinners behind the balustrades of a beaux-arts mansion; regret that his daughters wouldn’t ride their own ponies and celebrate their birthdays with dancing parties for dozens of their special friends from down the block. Banished from those lamplit boulevards behind the gates, the entire Allen family, Kirby and Nella and Esther and Charlotte, had been pushed into social exile: a suite at the Warwick Hotel all the way out on Hermann Park.

  Nella poured more Johnnie Walker over ice cubes. Hetty could hear them cracking in the silence. After a while, she said, “I’ll make a deal with you, Mamá. I’ll go out with Lamar if you’ll let me go out with Garret.”

  “If you spoil your chances with Lamar over some ne’er-do-well from Montana, I’ll kill you!”

  “Mac is hardly a ne’er-do-well.”

  “Mac?”

  Hetty played with a silver tassel.

  “When did you become so familiar with him, young lady?”

  “That’s what everyone calls him.”

  “So he is a friend.”

  “I like him, Mother. I want to see him again. Is that so horrible?”

  “I can’t give my permission.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know enough about him. And neither do you.”

  “I know all I need to know. Please, Mamá.”

  Nella shook her head.

  “Then you’re going to have a hard time explaining to the Rusks why I’ve turned down their invitation.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Watch me.” Hetty marched over and slid the invitation off the sideboard, heading toward her room to pen a refusal.

  Nella glared at her as she passed. “Oh, all right!” she barked. “Invite Mr. MacBride to call. And I hope you come to your senses, you silly girl. Now go in and comfort your sister. She’s heartbroken.”

  Hetty hovered in the door to Charlotte’s bedroom, holding the invitation behind her back. Whiffs of hot chocolate floated in the air. Two bleary eyes glared at her from a mound of eyelet lace on the four-poster bed.

  “Can I come in?”

  “No! I’ll never speak to you again. Go away!”

  Hetty retrieved the tulips and anemones off the sideboard and lugged them into her own room, kicking the door shut with her foot. She slid the heavy vase onto her dresser, in front of the mirror. To let in more light, she parted her black and orange draperies bearing the Chinese emblem of happiness. She turned around and appraised Lamar’s gift. It was grandiose, like everything he did. A giant spray of purple anemones and dipping red tulips that towered over all her other possessions. Hetty’s room was still stacked high with the quaint splendors of the Pagoda Shop in downtown Houston, leftovers from her obsession with chinoiserie as a girl. There were carved soapstone boxes poised atop antique tables, elephant bookends huddled together before an ornate Chinese screen, and lots of crystallized ginger in smart little brocade boxes. Nella hated the clutter and thought the draperies were in especially bad taste, but Hetty had hung them there as a kind of talisman against despair. She never really believed happiness would be hers. Not in the spontaneous way it came to her sister. She glanced back at the Chinese calligraphy rippling on the gaudy orange silk now incandescent with sunlight—taunting her with its double meaning of “blessed.” Even though she’d awakened to these black brushstrokes of luck every morning, they had failed to work their charm. She noticed for the first time how much the letter resembled a dagger, its downward stroke a razor-sharp blade. “Yeah,” she sniggered to herself. “That’s what fortune has done to me—stabbed me!” Hetty’s hand moved to her breast. She had never talked to anyone, not even Lina, about the burr lodged there, but it was a constant irritant: My father prefers my sister. He never said so, of course, but showed it in so many ways. Fathers don’t realize how they reveal themselves. Long before children start to talk, Hetty knew, there’s another language they learn from the way people act. She remembered how Kirby had doted on Charlotte every time he gazed on her pale baby’s skin and her gray eyes. The radiant smiles that would light his face. This was his daughter . . . Charlotte Baldwin Allen, named for the wife of his famous ancestor Augustus Chapman Allen. Charlotte Baldwin had been married to one of the largest landholders in the Texas Republic, the founder of the city, her house built on a prime spot along Main Street. There was gravi
ty to the name and lineage, the blessings of good birth—whereas Hetty had been named after her mother’s remote relatives in San Antonio . . . Esther Ardra.

  Some of Hetty’s earliest memories were of Kirby rocking colicky Charlotte to sleep, letting her nap on the big leather sofa in his study, which Hetty was not even allowed to sit on. “She’s only a baby,” Hetty was told, which didn’t make her feel any better. Then, when Charlotte was a little older, there were the covert trips to the bank, the outings to Ligget’s Drugstore for chocolate shakes. Charlotte realized early on how many points she could score with her sister by bragging about the special privileges granted to Kirby’s favorite daughter. At Christmas, there would be way too many presents under the tree for Charlotte, excused because she was younger, while Hetty got gifts more appropriate for her age.

  It wasn’t conscious, of course. Doing things for Hetty somehow slipped Kirby’s mind, until he remembered himself and apologized. But it was too late; the damage was done. When Hetty complained that she never got to go to the bank, he would take her along, then ignore her while he conducted business. She would sit there in a creaking office chair with the Edison stock ticker to keep her company. It would click into life periodically, tapping out its esoteric messages, one symbol per second. Hetty would watch the tape jerk out of the ticker and unspool across the desk. She wanted to cut it off, learn to read what it said, and wear the ribbon in her hair. She could never tell what the ticker symbols meant, but knew they had something to do with the value of stocks. She began to think of it as a time machine, tap, tap, tapping out messages from her past, telling her why her stock was down, spelling out vital secrets if only she could decipher them. She always imagined the hand that was tapping out the message on the keys at the other end and wondered whose it was.

  Hetty shook her head to rout out the tapping and sat down at her desk. She reached for the tortoiseshell pen her father had given her last Christmas—typical of the kind of “practical” gifts she always got. She filled it with midnight blue ink and slid out a few sheets of her linen rag stationery with the deep blue monogram. She smiled when she saw the letters EAA. Finally things had turned her way. A man had actually favored Esther Ardra over Charlotte Baldwin. Lamar had chosen her. The subtle odor of tulips and anemones wafted across the room. She let the fragrance fill her with a deep delight. Orange light fell across her desk. Happiness was finally within reach. But then she remembered Charlotte’s swollen eyes and wondered—how can it be perfect happiness when it’s at someone else’s expense?