Magnolia City (18 page)

When Garret walked in the next night, Hetty was ready for him. She lounged across crisp white sheets on the sofa, freshly bathed, in a pair of satin pajamas. A soft light pervaded the rooms, thrown by new table lamps with silk scarves draped around the shades. Stalks of red gladiolas towered over the coffee table. The furniture gleamed. He stood at the door, a look of pleasant surprise spreading over his face.

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“I’ve been in class for two days.”

“Class?”

“Home economics with Professor Pearlie. She really knows her mops.”

“I’ll bet she does.” He came into the center of the room, glancing around and sniffing the air.

Hetty impersonated Pearl’s East Texas twang: “ ‘A house without a woman runs wild.’ I learned all about Octagon Super Suds, Sani-Flush, Fuller Brush furniture polish, and spray cans of Flit for the roaches.”

He smiled faintly. “I take it you’re going to stay for a while.”

“Not for long. I just couldn’t sleep in this rat hole another night without cleaning it.”

He loosened his tie, slipped off his chauffeur’s coat, and slung it over a hook. He nosed around for a few minutes, used the bathroom, then came back in and stretched out in his old club chair. He ran his hands over the fresh ticking on the arms. “This chair feels different.”

“Slipcovers. Another one of Professor Pearlie’s tricks.”

“You wanted to be back with me, admit it.” He came over and squatted on the edge of the sofa.

Hetty could smell his cologne, that manly limy smell she usually liked. Now it just soured her nose, like too much lemon squeezed into tonic. She pulled the sheet closer around her body and pushed him off the couch with her feet. He fell to the floor.

“Why’d you do that?”

“For one thing, I’m beat. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. Pearl is a slave driver. Today we ran into Munn’s to buy lamps and linens and had to carry all the packages home on the streetcar. I just want to go to sleep.”

“How can you push me away?” He stood up, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a thick wad of bills. He tossed it onto the coffee table, where it uncurled like a peony in the last stages of bloom. “Look at all this money I brought you.”

“Good. I owe Pearl sixty-six dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

“I’ll pay her.”

“Thanks.” Hetty poked at the cash, trying to estimate how much it was. “This is peanuts compared to what you could be making in the oil business.”

Her words made him bristle. “Sorry if it’s not good enough for you, goddammit. Maybe you should go back to Lamar.”

“Maybe I will.”

He went into the bedroom and slammed the door. She got up and turned off all the lamps, falling back onto the sofa bone weary. She could hear him slamming around. He paced the floor, unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and then brushed his teeth in the bathroom with the new tube of Ipana she’d gotten. She heard the old bedsprings squeaking and decided they should use part of his wad of money to buy a new mattress. She kept drifting off in the dark and quiet, but waking up and wondering if Garret was asleep. The bedsprings squeaked again.
Good,
she thought,
he’s tossing and turning, too.

Through heavy eyelids, she saw him slip back into the room in his undershirt and shorts, pour himself a drink from a silver flask, and light the little beeswax candles she’d arranged in a candelabra on the coffee table. As a warm haze began to mingle with the scent of lemon oil, she heard him light a cigarette. He sat in the flickering light smoking, and began to talk quietly and earnestly. She could hardly stay awake to concentrate on what he was saying, but found his deep voice oddly soothing.

He talked about his wanderings around Texas to visit the big oil strikes since Spindletop—places like Saratoga, Electra, and Desdemona. He went on spreading his dreams out before her until they crowded the room and pushed the walls out into the far reaches of the night. His deep voice kept pulling her down until she finally went under and didn’t wake again until the candles had burned out and all was quiet. A blue haze sifted in from the streetlamps.

She heard the floor creak and saw him come back into the living room and stand over her, this time without his undershirt and boxer shorts. His white body looked so pure and tempting in the pale light.

“You’re naked.”

“I have a confession to make. You’re the only person I would tell this to.”

Hetty knew not to say anything. She waited.
I’m watching a deer venture out of deep woods into a meadow. The slightest movement on my part . . . and it’s gone.

He knelt down in front of her. “I don’t know how to drill an oil well. I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“So all those stories about oil towns aren’t true?”

“Oh, they’re true. I did visit those places. But I always felt like a tourist. I didn’t know how to get on the inside so I could learn the secrets of the old wildcatters.”

“You will. Every weevil has to learn the business. We’ll do it together—okay?”

“So you’re not going to leave me and go back to Lamar?”

She shook her head. He rose off the floor. Hetty thought he was going to crush her as he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. He started to climb on top of her, his confidence renewed. She pushed him back.

“Now
I
have a confession to make.”

“Okay. Your turn.” He laughed with relief.

“Shall I get naked?”

“I’d like that.”

“Can you help me?”

He slipped her pajama bottoms off first, then unbuttoned her top and helped her slip it off. She covered her breasts with her arms because she knew he would look at them. But she wanted to be completely vulnerable, so she overcame her modesty and lowered her arms to her sides. He looked. Her nipples went hard in spite of herself.

“I didn’t come back here because of our wedding vows. I don’t believe in keeping vows just for the sake of keeping vows. I came back because I had no place else to go. Mamá kicked me out.”

“I knew she would.”

Hetty described it all to him: her empty room, the piles of stuff in the back hall, the news about Henry Picktown Waller.

“What a—” Garret stopped himself.

“Go ahead and say it—Mamá’s a bitch. She’ll never forgive me for marrying you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I want you here with me, Hetty.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. We can’t abandon Pick, Garret. I’ve worked too hard to rescue that family from the Ward.”

She pulled him up onto the sofa with her, then slid her hands up his arms and around his shoulders. “Promise me one thing. When you drill your first well, I want you to put Pick on the crew.”

“So I
am
drilling a well.”

“No.
We’re
drilling a well.”

He hugged her again. She loved the way her breasts felt so warm against his bare skin. “I really love you,” he whispered into her ear.

“Why do you love me?”

“Because you’re kind. Because you want to help Pick and his kin.”

“It’s not kindness.”

“What is it, then?”

“Survival. I’m their only hope. If I drop the ball, those kids will die.”

“Here’s to survival, then.”

“Amen.”

He kissed her tenderly on the mouth. She couldn’t stop him and couldn’t break away. She promised herself she wouldn’t sleep with him tonight, but when he took her by the hand and led her into the bedroom, she followed, telling herself that she was half-asleep and didn’t know what she was doing. The silver cord of pleasure that had tied them together in the ocean was still too tightly wound. It wrapped them together invisibly so she could barely breathe.

He sat down on the bed, and she knelt in front of him. He opened his legs. She kissed his thighs, his stomach. Then she buried her face in his fragrant genitals. She began kissing and licking, hungry for his salt taste. When he grew hard, she drove her mouth farther down on his cock, swallowing the whole thing. He sat back on the bed, paralyzed with pleasure. She sucked on it feverishly, up and down, like she imagined a prostitute would do. That’s what she was now—Mac’s whore. He moaned, and Hetty felt herself, again, simultaneously captivated and alarmed at how deeply his passion fed on the sincerity and disgrace of her submission.

Then they were in bed, rustling through the cool new sheets she’d just bought. His mouth was right at her ear, nibbling, kissing, talking so low she could hardly understand him at times.
Whispering so no one can hear me,
like the song said.
This is what it means to be a love slave,
she thought. This was the real thing. This was what her friends could only dream about, what Wini read about in marriage manuals. Hearing a man’s most secret thoughts expressed in these passionate whispers, here in the middle of the night when you can’t see his face but can only feel his body wrapped tightly around yours.

The wind picked up and stirred the leaves of the post oak tree that was the only covering for the windows in the bedroom. They seemed to whisper
Nella,
as if she were spying on them. Hetty knotted up, feeling her mother’s disapproval like a cold hiss. Then Garret’s hand slid down between her legs. She yielded slowly into what was alive and richly warm inside her—more insistent even than the bare lightbulbs and the windows with no curtains and the cockroaches. His tongue worked her until he had stroked Nella and memory right out of her mind, and she went flowing in his heat and was nothing now but a warm liquidlike stream, eddying in the drift of his love.

Then he lay on top of her, heavy, manly. He made love to her for a long time, talking all the while, slipping into obscenities until his voice, like his self, became so triumphant over her that she could only answer in the affirmative over and over chanted in with other phrases, syllables, and half-formed sounds that lost all meaning and became nothing, nothing, but the deepest felt and most urgent sound of surrender in the night.

O
n a limp evening in July, Hetty sat next to Garret at the big oak table in the gloom of the Weems’ dining room. The dusky shadows and dank air made her feel as though she’d plunged to the bottom of a warm pool. The only light left on was in the kitchen, because lamps would raise the temperature too much. A ceiling fan churned the air to no avail. Her husband was making her sweat even more with questions. “Why won’t you call your father?”

“He’s not going to help us, Mac.”

Garret jumped out of his chair. “Why not? He’s an oil man.”

“Sit down and have some ham, y’all,” said Pearl, carving. “A cold supper for a hot night.” Odell sent plates wheeling across the table from hand to hand, heavy and fragrant.

“Don’t you remember the last thing he said to you? ‘You’re not welcome in my home.’ ” Hetty held her iced tea glass to her forehead and closed her eyes.

Everyone else started eating. After a few moments, Garret asked while chewing, “So what do we do now?”

Hetty was wondering the same thing. She’d checked her wallet last night. She had $7.34 in cash, plus a small balance in her bank account. She set her iced tea down. “Maybe you should get a job working on a crew.”

Odell almost choked on his food. Garret looked at her, amazed. “Do you have the faintest idea how much the average worker makes?”

“Not a clue.” She nibbled on potato salad.

“I didn’t think so. About a hundred a month. I doubt that Kirby Allen’s daughter is going to be happy living on that.”

Odell regarded her over his spectacles. “As Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.’ I’ve said it again and again to Garret, and now I’ll say it to you,” he explained, looking at her cagily. “You don’t make money by working harder. You make money by using your imagination.”

A silence fell as Hetty took this thought in. There was only the sound of knives and forks clinking on china.

“So I guess it’s back to The Hammocks,” Garret spoke up.

“What’s The Hammocks?” Hetty asked.

“Our cottage on West Beach in Galveston,” Odell said, mopping his brow with his napkin. “Out past Thirteen Mile Road.”

“Garret loves that place,” Pearl said. “I’ve seen him disappear yonder for a week at a time. You’ll have to take your new bride there, Mac. Don’t worry; we do have beds. The hammocks is out on the porch.”

“I’ll have some more of that tasty potato salad, Pearlie,” Odell said. “Yes’m. No one would have suspected that inside The Hammocks we were running a thriving import business.”

“We’d leave a light on in the house, see,” said Garret, “and that would be the beacon that would guide our boat back to West Beach. Wouldn’t be another light for miles. Even the roads run out.”

“Sounds risky,” Hetty said. “Was it worth it?”

“Let’s put it this way, my dear,” Odell said, holding his knife and fork in midair and fixing her with a burning glance. “A case of Haig and Haig Pinch costs sixty dollars off the ship and sells for three or four times that on the mainland. I’d say that’s a pretty good profit for a few hours’ work, wouldn’t you?”

His stare made her laugh and admit that he was right.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When Congress passed the Volstead Act they created a business opportunity unprecedented in our lifetime. We just need to find a new spigot, that’s all.”

Hetty set her silverware down with a clatter. She had just remembered her dream—the one where her grandmother turned water into wine. She recalled what the wine was flowing out of: an old-fashioned iron spigot.

“What’s wrong, hon?” Pearl asked.

“Nothing,” Hetty answered.

Hetty wrote to her mother the next morning.

Garret was still coiled in the bedclothes asleep, while she stretched out on the couch in her silk pajamas and drank coffee the way she liked it, guzzled, not sipped, with a glut of sugar. She had all the windows open. The shadowy living room felt cool and fresh, but it wouldn’t last. Heat was already leaking like silt into the clear night air pooled under the post oak trees.

She checked the rusty mailbox at the bottom of the stairs every day. The only posts that came were an electric bill and a letter in a big swirling hand addressed to Garret from Arleen MacBride in Butte, Montana. When she asked him what his mother had said, he brushed her off with an evasive answer. At the end of the week, two letters arrived for Hetty, both written on ecru rag with the familiar gray monograms.

When Hetty stepped through the bronze doors of the Esperson Building two days later, she headed straight for the banking quarters, not knowing what she’d find. She was running out of cash and wanted to check the balance in her account to see if Kirb had deposited her stipend for July. She tried not to let her fingers tremble as she presented her passbook to the teller. He stepped away from the cage, thumbed through a cart of ledger sheets, and must have said something to the bookkeeper at the adding machine, because she glanced at Hetty, then quickly dropped her gaze. The teller came back looking a little sheepish.

“I show this account as being closed,” he said, handing the passbook back. “I’m sorry, Miss Allen.”

“Isn’t there any money I can withdraw?”

“The balance is zero, ma’am.”

Hetty averted her eyes. “Well . . . thanks for checking.” She tucked the passbook into her handbag and glanced past him. Now two bookkeepers were ogling her and Lonnie, too, who’d stopped wrapping coins to see what was going to happen. Only Kirb was ignoring her completely, pretending to work at his desk at the back of the banking floor.

Hetty went over to a marble island and took out her tortoiseshell fountain pen. In her passbook, under the
Withdrawals
column, she wrote,
My father’s love
.

Back in the Esperson lobby, the terrazzo floors were so highly polished, Hetty was afraid she might slip and fall. She took the elevator to the Cupola Club on the twenty-seventh floor. The maître d’ looked up. “Miss Allen, how are you?” The club’s distinctive crest, a round Greek temple, embellished his blazer.

“Hello, Cooper. Actually, I’m not Miss Allen, anymore. I’m Mrs. MacBride.”

“Of course. Congratulations. I should have remembered. Your mother called.”

“She did?” A tinge of disappointment pricked Hetty’s breast. She was hoping Nella would forget about the open door always afforded the Allen sisters here at the club. Hetty leaned forward and whispered, “I’m still a member, aren’t I?”

Cooper shook his head and smiled at her sympathetically. He handed her an envelope embossed with the round Greek temple. Hetty glanced at the application inside, trying not to react to the annual membership dues: $1,500.00. “Meanwhile I’m meeting Doris Verne Hargraves for luncheon.”

“Of course, Ross will carry you back.” Hetty followed the tall colored waiter to rooms that opened out into air and light. He escorted her through French doors onto one of the six private roof gardens terraced at the top of the building. The brightness was stunning, but the tables were sheltered by a canopy of leafy shadows. Doris Verne stood and hugged her.

Winifred Neuhaus sat sipping iced tea in an outrageous set of white silk beach pajamas and a beret. “Where have you been, kiddo?” she said behind big round sunglasses. “I’m terrified they’re going to run out of shrimp.”

“Am I late? Look at you!” She gave her a little peck on the cheek.

Ross pulled Hetty’s chair out but didn’t seat her. “Drink, miss?” he asked in his haughty tone.

“I’ll have iced tea, please, sir. I had to pick up an application to the club. Now that I’m an old married woman, I want my own membership.” She set the envelope down beside her plate.

Winifred snickered. “You’ll never get in.”

“Surely they wouldn’t turn down an Allen?” Doris Verne asked from under her hat brim.

“They can turn down anyone they want, kiddo. This is the Esperson Building.” Winifred crooked her finger and said, “See that cupola?” They craned their necks to look at the round Greek temple rising into the blue heavens four floors above them. “They say Mellie Esperson has her office inside it. She sits up there higher than everybody else in town, looking down on the rest of us, surveying her little kingdom, and making sure her henchmen guard the doors. She may even be watching us now. Somebody wave.”

Hetty sat back in her chair, smoking, and tried to relax into the amiable chatter. Winifred went on rattling off esoteric facts about the Esperson Building, confiding that more million-dollar oil deals were made right there in the Cupola Club than in all the boardrooms across Texas.

“That’s why Garret and I need to get in.”

“You’ve got to if you want to make it in this gassy town,” Winifred said. “My dad signed one of the first leases in the building. I remember him telling Mom, ‘Esperson’s the place to be.’ Okay, let’s eat!”

The three of them prowled around the buffet, heaping their gold-rimmed plates with coleslaw, gargantuan Gulf shrimp, and scallops swimming in cream. They took turns talking and eating, catching up on the latest developments in their lives. Winifred gave a report from Belinda Welch, who’d headed to Virginia a week ago and was busy preparing for a big horse show in Lexington. “How’s married life?”

“Full of surprises.”

“Well, at least you can Fornicate Under Command of the King now.”

“Wini!” Doris Verne said.

“What? You do know that’s what
F-U-C-K
stands for? It’s an acronym. When the king wanted to increase the population of England, he commanded his subjects to fornicate as much as possible. It was their patriotic duty.”

“And that’s our history lesson for today,” Hetty said. “Thanks, Wini.”

“You’re welcome.” She glanced at her watch and signaled the waiter. “I must be off, chums. Getting the hair cut even shorter.” As they paid their bills, Winifred fluttered both her tiny hands in good-bye.

Hetty hadn’t noticed how much the shade of the canopy had inched across the table. The membership package sat in full sunlight, glaring at her, mocking her. This was the visible sign of her banishment from the hidden realm of No-Tsu-Oh. Now that she was alone with her best friend, she couldn’t help but fret.

Doris Verne leaned forward and bathed Hetty in the golden light of her hazel eyes. The sunlight radiating off the white tablecloth gave them a few extra volts of energy. “What’s wrong, Het?”

“The reason I picked up an application is that my membership’s been canceled.”

“Who would do that?”

“My mother, of course. It’s all part of her vast campaign of revenge.” Hetty told Doris Verne about some of Nella’s other maneuvers. “And my dad’s cut off my stipend. I’ll never raise fifteen hundred dollars.”

Doris Verne frowned. “I thought Garret was in oil.”

Hetty wondered if she’d said too much. But she didn’t care; she had to soothe the chafing in her heart by confessing everything to Doris Verne, who’d always been like a sister to her. For the first time she found herself telling someone the whole truth about her marriage: the flight from Galveston, the bottles hidden under the seat in the brougham, the tacky little garage apartment she’d driven home to in the Heights. “And Garret’s family is no help. He won’t even talk about his mother. All I can squeeze out of him is that her name is Arleen. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”