by Sean Stewart
“Say, have you met Charisse?” he asked, as a young black woman walked up behind him. “Charisse, this is Toni Beauchamp, the sister of the bride.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, looking amused as Greg struggled to fold up his umbrella. “Greg told me dates were invited. I hope it’s true.” She held out her hand and I took it.
“The more the merrier. Frankly, we weren’t expecting a big turnout.”
“I’m only two blocks away.” Charisse was wearing a classy skirt, long red nails, gold hoop earrings, short-cropped hair. I figured her for a jazz singer and then wondered if that was racist. Then I tried imagining her as a junior loan executive and decided she could have been that too. I liked her. “Come in, please. Find your favorite place along the wall. So has Greg told you any stories about my mother?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Charisse said. Greg paled.
“Well, he should. Either that, or make him promise to do the alphabet to you,” I said.
“What?”
“Later,” Greg said, taking her by the arm. “You should see their garden before the rain comes back.”
La Hag Gonzales was next to arrive, along with all of Carlos’s brothers and sisters, each bearing a platter or basket or tray of wonderful delicacies: at the center, of course, a vast simmering chicken mole, smelling of peppers and bitter chocolate gravy. Second in importance, the viscochos, small round cinnamon wedding cookies. And then, loading the table until it groaned, salsa and tortilla chips and pan de dulce, tacitos, shrimps and scallops speared on toothpicks and then wrapped with bacon and basted with lime butter, tamales, fried cheese, fried tomatoes, fried battered jalapeños, and menudo, that delicious combination of hominy and tripe that is so intoxicating in the hands of a master. Nor had La Hag forgotten drinks: two of her brothers wheeled in a massive keg of Dos Equis, and she herself bore six bottles of Jose Cuervo’s best tequila.
“Oh, Señora Gonzales! This is so wonderful! Es excelente! Gracias, thank you, thank you!”
La Hag shook her head. “I am much embarrassed. We could not get the cake from Señora Gomez. The world will know how she has shamed me.” Her look did not bode well for poor Mrs. Gomez, who was doubtless in a dither at having to choose between Hurricane Iris and an enraged Conchita Gonzales. “Also, I am sad to say the mariachi players will be unable to attend. Something about a house falling down.”
“I hope nobody was hurt!”
“Nobody,” said Carlos’s mother, with an unsatisfied air. Clearly she considered failing to perform merely because one’s house had washed away tantamount to malingering.
I snuck a glance at the chifforobe and breathed a small thanks to the gods in there. Surely sparing Candy the mariachi band had to count as a small miracle in the Riders’ favor. “Carlos is not with you?”
“I sent him to fetch the priest.”
“From Baytown? That’s…that’s going to be quite a drive on a day like this.”
Señora Gonzales smiled. “Child, do not worry. He is my son. He will come.”
The next guest to arrive was the most surprising of all: it was Penny Friesen, Bill Sr.’s wife. “Mrs. Friesen,” I said, shocked. I kicked myself for not telling Candy about Momma’s affair with Bill Sr. She must have invited the Friesens without my knowing it.
“Hello, Toni.” A look passed between us, and I knew my stammering had given me away. Oh yes, Penny Friesen knew about Momma and her husband, and she knew I did too.
She held out an enormous vase of flowers. “I cut them last night. I always do, when a hurricane is coming. If I don’t, the storm beats them flat. No use wasting the beautiful things, is it?”
Looking past her shoulder, I saw her Volvo station wagon loaded with a mass of blossoms from her beautiful house and grounds. “Oh, thank you.”
“I can’t stay for the ceremony,” Penny said. “I don’t want to be caught outdoors when the eye passes, you know.”
I nodded. “And Mr. Friesen?”
“Mr. Friesen…” Penny looked at me. She smiled, almost apologetically. “Bill won’t be coming today.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, to the woman my mother had betrayed. I winced through another hard contraction. Penny looked at me sharply. I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m in labor. Not yet.”
She shook my hand, and then gave me a hug. “I always liked you girls.” She stepped back. “I envied your mother her daughters. Not that I haven’t enjoyed my son. But daughters are different, I think.”
I touched my tummy. “I think so too.”
“Give my best to Candace, will you? Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I said.
The phone rang as I headed back to the kitchen. Angela signed that she would finish arranging the flowers, so I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Toni? We broke down!” It was Carlos.
“We can wait. We aren’t going anywhere.”
“You don’t understand,” he yelled. “My car broke down. My car never breaks down. Does the Batmobile break down? Does Zorro’s horse go lame? No. This is not, this is not a spark plug going out. It is not natural.”
“Carlos, you are overreacting—”
“This is a sign, Antoinette!”
“Carlos—”
“I am in my car, with a priest, going to a wedding in a hurricane, the car breaks down. Am I blind? No. Something is very wrong. I am being told something.”
“Carlos, listen to me. Listen to me, Carlos. You’re right. You are right, your car didn’t break down by accident. It was los duendes. They have been playing a few tricks, but I talked to them just now and we all understand one another.”
Silence.
“Carlos? Are you listening?”
“You talked to los duendes?”
“Sí. Yes. Everything will be fine with them. Your mother is here, with all the family and the food and the beer, Carlos. We all look forward to seeing you.”
“Los duendes. Okay. But what about your mother? She never liked me. What about her? I think she’s the one who broke my car.”
“She would be very happy for Candy. I promise you.”
Another long silence. “You speak for her, eh?”
I saw Candy’s head peeking down the stairs, scanning the room. “Yes. On this I speak for Momma. She gives her blessing, Carlos. I swear it. Now come as quick as you can. You have a beautiful bride here waiting for you.”
“I got nothing against Candy. Candy I like. La Beauchamp and los duendes, these are other matters.”
“I swear I will intercede with them. You should see Candy, Carlos. She’s a vision. You better get here before your best man steals her away, is what I think.”
“I got nothing against Candy,” Carlos said.
I gasped as another contraction hit me. What had that been, four minutes? Five? Please God, don’t send me into labor now.
“Okay,” Carlos said. “Okay. We’re coming. We will be there. Vámanos, Padre. Okay, Toni, we will come.”
And they did, ten minutes after the eye of the hurricane had passed over us. The storm wall was howling through the neighborhood, tearing the flat leaves from the banana trees and hammering the last of the crepe myrtle blossoms to the ground. Carlos and the priest staggered in, wind-lashed and blinking the water from their eyes. Carlos had tricked his car into starting again. He had found a short in the electrical system and fixed it with a hank of wire that held almost till he reached us. The last two blocks they came on foot, Carlos and the padre leaning sixty degrees into the wind.
It was a mad, merry celebration, and everyone was drunk on the storm before the first shot of tequila was poured.
My contractions fizzled out, gone completely by the time the ceremony was over, but the strange energy that had filled me since Candy’s phone call kept me up and alert all afternoon. I even waltzed, lumbering a few steps when we turned Daddy’s battery-powered transistor radio on to KQQK SuperTejano and cleared the center of the ground floor for dancing. Angela had a rare tim
e. She hit it off with La Hag, incredibly enough; the last time I saw them together they were giggling in a corner, Señora Gonzales having challenged Angela to match her in some Mexican drinking game from a girlish past apparently far racier than I had imagined.
Bill Jr. arrived as the hurricane began to weaken, just after the reception had begun. He strode in clutching a bottle of champagne and swung me off my feet—no mean accomplishment, as I had added forty-six pounds to my pre-pregnancy frame. “Twenty-seven hundred and sixty barrels a day!” he shouted in my ear.
“What?”
“We hit a gusher! Twenty-seven hundred and sixty barrels a day! We drilled the wells like you said, and the very last one was a monster!” Which was the kind of glorious day it was—
—for everyone except Carlos and Candy. He was nervous and wet and out of sorts, glancing constantly at me and at the chifforobe, barely looking at his bride. For her part, my sister was beautiful, of course, but not what you would call radiant. I never had seen a wedding at which the bride, when asked if she would take this man, said, “Oh, yeah. Whatever,” and looked fit to spit.
THIRTEEN
Candy didn’t look much happier when I saw her the next day. I had been to the Home Depot for some supplies, and was hard at work outside the house. The energy that had come to me with her phone call had not abated, but now I felt desperately pressed for time. Two days before, I couldn’t wait for the baby to come. Now I knew there was something I had to do first.
“Hey,” Candy said, picking her way through the banana leaves and broken live-oak branches that littered the sidewalk.
“Hey.”
The sky was blue, blue, and the storm had washed away all the summer’s heat and smog, leaving it clear and empty and ready for autumn. Sunlight glimmered on the wet leaves and sidewalk puddles. The road was littered with twigs and pine needles and pecans; from where I stood by the front door I could see three snapped live-oak limbs dangling into our street. Chain saws chattered and whined up and down the block. “I thought you’d be halfway to San Cristóbal by now,” I said.
“Christ, Toni, that’s just like you. Of course I’m not going before the baby comes.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I’m still pissed off at you. It wasn’t my idea to come by today. Carlos made me.”
“Carlos?”
“He says he isn’t getting in a car with me until I make things right with you. He says you’re thick with Momma and los duendes, and I better treat you nice or there’s going to be shit for peace in our house.”
I laughed.
“It should have been me the Riders wanted.” Candy shrugged. “It should have been me Momma gave her curses to. But it wasn’t. And for that, I guess I owe you, Toni. I was jealous, but I was glad, too, that you were there to take care of me. Again. As always.”
Tears starting coming down my cheeks. Ever since Momma died I could not seem to stop this wretched dribbling.
“So what are you doing?” Candy asked.
“Painting.”
“I see that. Why now?” I didn’t answer. She looked at the door trim, which I had finished, and the fence, which I was starting. “Yellow around the door, white on the f—” She looked at me. “The Little Lost Girl’s house.”
“Want to help?”
“Okay,” she said. “Yeah.”
“Grab a brush. It’s probably crazy to paint this fence. I should replace it first. But I woke up this morning knowing I had to get this done before the baby came. My own little spell,” I said. “Dad’s drilling the swing for me. Where do you think we should hang it, inside the fence or outside?”
“Outside,” Candy said. “The Little Lost Girl can see it easier.”
I nodded and slapped more paint on the fence. “I guess you think I’m crazy.”
Candy picked up a brush. “Actually, Toni, this is the first sane thing you’ve done since Momma died.”
I laughed, but I was crying too. “She was the little lost girl all the time,” I said.
Candy looked at me. “You never knew that?”
I shook my head and winced as another contraction hit. They’d been coming all morning, slow but steady. Now they were nine minutes apart. I stopped painting for a moment and tried to breathe through the tears and the pain. These weren’t like the clenching feeling of the Braxton-Hicks. These were like being stabbed in my lower back. “This means business.”
“I’ll be there,” Candy said. “Angie gave me some coaching on what not to say.”
“Like?”
“Whatever else I do, I’m not supposed to say, ‘Don’t worry, honey, the baby’s doing fine.’”
I laughed. “And the other one?”
“‘I know how you feel.’”
“Good advice,” I said.
I picked up my brush, but before I could lay on another stroke Candy put her arms around me. “Hang on, big sister,” she said, smelling of cinnamon. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Just before lunch we hung the swing from a limb of the live-oak tree. Shortly after three o’clock I went into the hospital, and nineteen hours later my daughter, Grace Ellen, was born.
I wish so many things for her.
I hope, I pray, I will be able to give her the gifts which have been given so richly to me all my life. Here I bless her with these blessings. I give her Greg’s sly wit and taste for miracles. I give her Bill Jr.’s appetite and hope she too can order a Peachy Keen without blushing when she wants one. I hope she can be as smart as Rick Manzetti, as careful and as principled.
From Mary Jo, the great-aunt she will never know, I give her hard truths and the strength to abide loneliness, and a great power for friendship.
From Uncle Carlos I give her careful wisdom and a love of fine cars and the ability to believe a thing without needing to say it. I have to say I hope she gets her brains from her mother and her looks from her aunt, but if she has even one thimbleful of Candy’s joy for life, she will be blessed.
From Daddy I give her slow patience and a knowledge of the strike zone. From him I learned the cost of love, and saw that he was willing to pay it.
I give her the Riders, the Preacher in the strength of his convictions, and Sugar in the fullness of her desires. May she have Mr. Copper’s power to claim what she wants, and the vigilance of the Widow to watch her and keep her. I bless her with Pierrot’s luck, if not his temperament, and hope she can laugh, even in the darkness.
As for me? I will give her everything, even my failures, because a mother can do no less. She can have my brains and my wariness and my bitterness and my love, I can’t deny her anything. She will take what she needs from this strange mixed blessing, and God willing, she will find her own uses for it.
I used to think that there was only one true person living in a body, one truth surrounded by a pack of lies. Now I know I was wrong. We are all of us a hundred different selves, mothers and daughters, busy professionals and lazy housekeepers, zealous reformers and incumbents on the take. And each of these women is true in her turn. Each of us is a mockingbird.
In the time since Grace was born no visions have come to me and no Rider has mounted me, except the Mockingbird, who I have called, and who has come to me every day of this new part of my life. Did you ever really think this was my voice alone, telling this story? Me with the degree in math and a deep knowledge of the General Mortality tables? I could never do it.
But Momma could.
It is Elena’s voice, I think, that fills these pages. Or say rather, it is Elena’s song, and I am the mockingbird who sings it. I don’t think I will ever be able to separate my mother from myself. As long as I live, then part of her lives too; and the same will be true for my daughter, and hers, and hers.
We are all singers, in this family, and we are also songs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a big debt of gratitude to Maureen McHugh, who believed in this book and backed up that belief with much solid advice. Hamd and Joanna Alkhayat pati
ently talked me through Commodities Trading for Dummies and, better still, made it sound romantic. Everything right about oil-field exploration and financing is owed to Laurel Holmes; the mistakes, of course, are mine. Sage Walker and Sarah Charlesworth gave freely of their medical and actuarial advice, respectively. Dawn Bryan and Karin Fuog head a long list of Other Excellent Readers; I thank you all.
This book is dedicated to the Texan women in my life—a mess of aunts, cousins and friends, and especially my grandmothers Vivian Stewart and Jeanette Thornton. Most of all I thank my mom, who will never fully escape the Lone Star State; my wife, who couldn’t avoid it; and my daughters, who have coped with it so very gracefully.
about the Author
Sean Stewart is the acclaimed author of The Night Watch, Clouds End, the New York Times Notable Book, Resurrection Man, the Aurora Award-winner Nobody’s Son, and the Aurora and Arthur Ellis Award-winning debut, Passion Play. He lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife and two daughters.