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—THE COSMOS: WE’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.
“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?”
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