Six
She woke to sun spilling into her bedroom. She pushed away an instant sense of fear. She reached for a robe and walked into her bathroom. Its door framed a full-length mirror she usually ignored. If she looked quickly, closing her eyes first, might she see again the vagrant prettiness she thought she’d glimpsed yesterday? She brushed her hair, letting it fall in natural waves. She made herself up with the cosmetics abandoned from the night of Enid’s accusation. Before she could face herself fully in the mirror, her hands flew to her face, rubbing off the makeup that had outraged Enid.
In her room, she put on her glasses, but she left her hair the way she had brushed it. She rejected a dark dress that mourned; she chose a light one, a shade of blue. Then she restored some makeup, lightly.
In the living room, Ted’s long body, fully clothed except for his boots, tossed awake on the couch. Sleep still nudging, he touched himself urgently to make sure he was dressed. Quickly, he put on his boots, reached for his cowboy hat, put it on, took it off.
Normalyn was about to laugh. But when he stood up, she felt a stab of renewed fear—quickly calmed when he looked at her so anxiously. She hurried to the kitchen. She made coffee, as she did on other mornings, several cups for Enid, to help the pills alert her. Normalyn placed an extra cup and saucer near the brewing coffee. Then she took away the saucer so the cup wouldn’t look inviting. She sat down at the table with her own coffee.
Ted stood at the door, cautiously, to gauge her reaction. She did not look at him. He smelled the coffee, noticed the bare cup. With enormous formality, he asked, “May I?” She nodded. He filled his cup. He stood near the table, indicating a chair. “May I?” She hardly nodded. He stopped himself from reaching for the sugar. “May I?”
They drank the coffee in silence. Normalyn did not feel threatened by him, but she still would not face him. When he finished his coffee, he thanked her—“very much”—for it. He was exhibiting grand Texas manners, for her, Normalyn knew, but that didn’t mean anything. Even the meanest people in the state had them.
Sitting awkwardly in the judging silence, Ted longed to ask Normalyn to have lunch with him. He’d been paid Friday at his job unloading at the Langsdon Trucking Company Warehouse. That provided part of his college tuition, the rest came from a scholarship. He prepared his invitation—but when he spoke it, it sounded odd: “Will you eat with me today?”
“I’m having lunch with Mayor Hughes,” Normalyn informed him coolly.
“May I drive you there?” he offered in minor substitution.
“Not in that damn white pickup!” she reacted in anger—and remembered how for a time she had looked for the truck eagerly, expecting to see him.
“I’ll walk you there if you want.”
She only shrugged. She had let herself glance at him to determine whom she would see. The “gypsy cowboy”? No, never again, he never existed! The despised man by the river? She saw the man who had remained with her last night because he knew she was afraid.
Ted felt optimism. She was relenting toward him—if slowly. Later, he might be able to tell her how pretty she looked.
Outside the house, Normalyn saw lime-green buds sprouting on trees like tiny flowers. In a few days all the trees would be full of green life. “Tomorrow,” she said aloud.
“Tomorrow what?” Ted asked her.
“Nothing.” She had only tested the word. It meant a future, a possible future. Then she felt it, a smile on her face, a foreign sensation, warm.
“You smiled!” Ted said aloud.
“I did not!” Normalyn walked briskly along the street, avoiding the parked pickup.
She had smiled, Ted knew, a smile that had turned sad, as if she did not know exactly how to form it. If only he could bring it back, the way it must have existed before he’d contributed to banishing it. He felt glad to be walking along the streets of Gibson with her.
They were inviting stares. That did not displease Normalyn. When she’d gone out with Enid, she was sure it was only Enid people looked at. This time they would be looking at her—she didn’t care why. They walked into the memorial plaza.
Ted shook his head in wonder at the “Texas Hero.” “No one knows who he is but everyone’s so damn sure he’s a war hero—you notice how those old men take off their hats and put them over their hearts when they walk by?” He firmed his own hat on his head and blurted aloud what he had long thought: “He looks to me like he’s about to expose himself under that old coat. Maybe he’ll do it when those Daughters of the Republic have their patriotic ceremony there.”
Normalyn walked quickly ahead of him.
Because of what he had said! Stupid! He felt dirty! “I’m sorry!” he yelled out to her.
But Normalyn had rushed away to disguise the fact that she had to cover her mouth to keep from roaring with laughter at his reference to the Daughters—whom Enid called “mummified clucks.” She ran across the street, toward the flowered patio of the Texas Grand Hotel.
2
The Texas Grand was a handsome old building of mixed architecture, part Southern, part Spanish, with arches and crenolated balconies.
Normalyn entered the elegant lobby. Ted followed her. She pretended not to notice him.
White stairs swept into the two main wings—an entire one of which was the Mayor’s “quarters.” A magnificent old chandelier floated over the stairs. A season’s dust had settled on it like mist. The hotel’s atmosphere of displaced time extended to the few “permanent guests” who sat in the lobby—an old couple, a man alone, a woman in perpetual mourning, others, all like ghosts from another country. Occasionally, tasteful tourists sought out the Texas Grand Hotel and found it “charming.” It was Mayor Wendell Hughes who, at great expense, kept the grand old hotel open.
“Well, darlin’ child, it’s good to see you, honey!” With one of his expensive canes, Mayor Hughes was descending the stairs, carefully, always concealing his limp. He was a portly man, with a full head of proud white hair; he wore a good-looking brown suit, purchased, like all his others, “at the only damn store worth talkin’ about, Neiman-Marcus, bless ’em.” He held Normalyn’s hands warmly in shared loss. “And Ted Gonzales—ha’rya?” The Mayor often deepened his drawl, when he wanted to assert his allegiance to its origin. He extended his hand to Ted. “Hear your father’s back from Dallas.” The Mayor prided himself on knowing everyone. “Ha’n’t seen your folks since y’all moved out to Langsdon. And your mother, Lorraine? Glad you could join us today—will you?”
Normalyn did not object to the reiterated invitation; Mayor Hughes seemed to want another presence. To control what might be asked? There was at least one subject she would bring up no matter who was there—her birth certificate.
Ted accepted the Mayor’s hand. This warm, gracious, elegant old man did not act or look like the tyrant Ted had discovered him to be since his own awareness of himself and giant Texas—the old man ruled his portion of Texas by enforcing a serenity that concealed any injustice. In his social studies class in Langsdon, Ted had invited glares and approval when he referred to the Mayor as “an old dinosaur.” “Thank you for inviting me, sir.” He was not “sirring” an Anglo, just addressing an old man.
“Why, Normalyn, how pretty you look, honey.” Mayor Hughes touched her cheek fondly, the flush of rouge.
Normalyn turned her head, embarrassed. He had not called her pretty since the day Enid had objected. She touched the shield of her glasses.
“But why shouldn’t you be pretty? After all, Enid was a beautiful woman, and she was your mother.” The Mayor’s eyes seemed to scrutinize Normalyn for a reaction.
She caught his look. She would determine how much he knew.
Suddenly they were assaulted by the heavy odor of rose perfume.
On waves of it, Clarinda Hughes had floated down the stairs. She was a reedy woman with unreally blackened hair and eyebrows, fiercely red lips on a face so heavily powdered it looked calcimined. Her rose-scented perfume was meant to
conceal the miasma of her alcohol. To disguise the origin of the scent, she pinned a felt rose on her shriveled chest. With readied dislike, she stared at Normalyn, the first time she and Enid’s daughter had been this close. “What did you do to yourself, you look painted!”
Normalyn’s hands started to rise, to remove the makeup. Instead, they dropped to her sides, fists. Enid had detested the woman— “a worthless, unfeeling creature.” “But yours," Normalyn said sweetly to Clarinda, “your makeup is so subtle you’d hardly suspect you used any.”
The Mayor disguised a brief smile.
“Ma’am!” Ted bowed slightly before Clarinda, to force the old woman’s clawing stare away from Normalyn.
Clarinda frowned at him. “You’re Lorraine’s boy. She married that Spanish man.” She allowed a faint judgment on the darkened line of her lips.
“My father is Mexican," Ted corrected.
Normalyn saw him stretching his full height, asserting his new pride. For the longest time yet, she had not seen the menacing man from the river.
“Well, now!” the Mayor summoned attention. “Let’s have our lunch! I opened muh main dinin’ room just for this orderly gathering.”
3
Only a small portion of the dining room of the Texas Grand Hotel was regularly kept open for the mothy presences who still ate there. Today, deep-wine panels sprinkled with golden fleurs-de-lis had been folded away. In the center of the main dining room formed by rising arches, only one table, in the middle, was elaborately set. About it, bare tables awaited vanished guests. Almost umber from seasons of desert sun, drapes flanked tall windows screened by ashen lace. Spring sun filtered into the room in tiny bouquets of light.
Ted winced when he saw two Mexican men quietly arranging the elaborate table. Not too long ago, he would have attempted to sever any association, retreating behind his “half-Irishness.”
“Mayor Wendell Hughes!” The ponderous presence of Lottie, the Mayor’s black cook, welcomed at the table. “And two young folks.” She pulled out the Mayor’s chair. Clarinda glowered at her. She glowered back. The Mayor pulled Clarinda’s chair. Ted rushed to attend to Normalyn’s: “Allow me.”
Lottie beamed over the full table.
The Mayor pretended to whisper—to Lottie’s chuckling delight: “If Lottie evuh left us, this whole beautiful hotel would vanish!”
“Yes!” Ted said pointedly.
With strict control, Lottie oversaw the serving of lunch by the two Mexican men. “I’ve told you, the salad fork is first!” she scolded. In certain parts of Texas lunch persists as an ample, full meal, and this one was: golden chicken, pearly potatoes, emerald peas. And a beaded crystal pitcher of iced tea.
“Iced tea with lime wedges—for you, honey,” Mayor Hughes confided to Normalyn, “just the way Enid favored hers.”
“Tell her to bring my tea, Wendell.” Clarinda would not speak to Lottie.
“You promised this morning,” the Mayor reminded his wife. “You agreed, not until dinner,” he said quietly.
“I said have her bring mine!” The woman’s voice prepared to declare public battle.
The Mayor nodded yes to Lottie. Disappearing, she reappeared in moments with another glass, which she wafted over the table, to be identified; the commanding odor of whiskey sprang out. “Her tea.” She gave it to the Mayor to give to Clarinda. She would not communicate with the white woman.
Bowing his head, the Mayor pronounced grace: “It’s a damn blessin’ to live in the State of Texas and the serene City of Gibson, God bless us all.” He punctuated his “Amen” by flourishing his fancy napkin onto his lap. His monogram— “W.H.”—was embroidered in swirly script.
“Now y’all enjoy my lunch!” Lottie added her own grace, before departing to tend to a promised “surprise.”
Normalyn welcomed the delicious food. She had not eaten fully since Enid’s death.
Leaning over, the Mayor pretended to conspire: “Known young Gonzales a long time, honey?”
Ted smiled at Normalyn, but when she said, hardly audibly, “Yes,” and edged away, he knew the troubled past had stirred.
The Mayor’s words to Ted sounded as friendly as they were abrupt: “I hear you been doin’ some kinda ‘research’ on the workuhs out in muh fields.”
“Yes, sir—for a school paper. I call it ‘American Gothic.’” The title pleased Ted.
“Ummm.” Mayor Hughes pondered it.
“I drove out to one of the big farms in the area to try to talk to some of the migrant workers about conditions—and a crazy man drove me away at gunpoint.” Ted welcomed this opportunity to present more evidence of his changed consciousness. “I didn’t know it was your farm, sir.”
“All of Gibson and its environs are mine—in a mannuh of speakin’.” The Mayor lengthened his drawl.
Normalyn looked at the Mayor, this kind man whom she cherished. For unwelcome moments she had remembered the book she had read, from the ones marked with an asterisk on Miss Stowe’s list of long ago. No, she could not associate him with that kind of injustice.
“Well, I guess bein’ inquisitive is part of being young.” The Mayor dismissed the subject of Ted’s “research” now that he had established he knew about it.
“Lost, damned, and accursed! That’s what young people are today,” Clarinda said. The stench of liquor battled the rose perfume.
Conspicuously ignoring her, Normalyn spoke her prepared words casually: “Mayor Hughes, I’d like to ask you a favor.”
“Anything, honey, you know that.” The Mayor’s spread hands offered limitless bounty.
“A copy of my birth certificate.”
The Mayor put down his fork, with puffy peas he had been about to bring to his mouth. He cleared his throat. “I’m sure you have one, honey.” He did not look at her. “I certified it myself, here in Gibson. Enid never got around to it in Galveston.” He gave intense attention to a morsel of crisp chicken.
“My mother did leave me a copy.” Normalyn slowed her words, to capture the Mayor’s slightest reaction. “But it’s all marked up and faded.”
A long silence hovered in the grand dining room.
“Of course I’ll get you a new copy, honey,” the Mayor said at last. “You can’t go around feelin’ you haven’t been born!”
Not born! That was how Normalyn felt—abandoned out of a life that had ended.
The Mayor’s voice was casual. “I myself don’t put much store by official papers. Most of them don’t mean a damn thing.”
“Like work permits that turn illegal after the crops are picked!” Ted faced the Mayor.
The Mayor pulled his eyes from him. He said to Normalyn, “Honey, I bet you’re thinkin’ of takin’ a trip out somewhere”—his voice lowered—“now that our beloved Enid has left us—”
“Amen,” Clarinda toasted with mock solemnity. She sat back quickly like a conniving malicious child.
Normalyn ignored her challenge. She seemed much too eager to confront.
The Mayor resumed: “That why you want your birth certificate, honey?”
Leave Gibson? The thought did not startle Normalyn. It might have been there a long time. Was Mayor Hughes suggesting it, even inviting it? Was he trying to find out how much she knew about Enid’s last acts?
“Modern cities are nests of corruption!” Clarinda spat. “Sodom and Gomorrah and Los Angeles.”
“You may just be right about that, Clarinda,” the Mayor agreed. “Why, honey,” he directed at Normalyn, “that must’ve been why your blessed mother brought you here after she discovered our tiny piece of order—so you’d grow up in the clean State of Texas, away from all that depravity.”
Was that the reason? Normalyn had expected clarity, but would this meeting provide only more questions? The Mayor’s carefully arranged lunch obviated directness.
“John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas, sir, and that was depraved.” Ted’s measured words hardly controlled his anger.
Mayor Hughes lock
ed an iron stare on him. “I knew Jack, youngman,” he said. “Knew Lyndon, too.”
“Vulgar school teachers, those Johnsons. I never received them,” Clarinda sneered, touching her perfumed rose.
“I liked Jack,” the Mayor told Ted. “A realistic man. Now Robert”—his voice turned harsh—“he didn’t bend. He—” The Mayor stopped abruptly.
Normalyn had reacted in apprehension at the mention of the two murdered brothers. Enid’s references to them at the last of her life—her rantings about “a terrible conspiracy”—had tinted the names for her with dangerous mystery. When Enid had taken her to Dealy Plaza, when they had watched the documentary on the murder of Robert Kennedy, Enid’s reaction had been strong. Normalyn had never been certain whether that was in anger at them, or their violent deaths—or both. Had the Mayor severed his reference because he knew of Enid’s vague assertions of association?
“Robert Kennedy is my hero,” Ted announced staunchly, “because he didn’t bend.” In the past year of self-questioning, he had discovered the Kennedys through his history classes. He was sure that Robert Kennedy’s commitment to justice had partly inspired his determination to become a good man himself. “He might have become the greatest President we ever had. And”—he added something no one had ever suggested but that he hoped was true—“I’ve been told that I resemble him.” He looked down into his plate, not risking their scrutiny.
“Well, you do not!” Mayor Hughes dismissed.
Normalyn looked at Ted. Tall, yes, lanky. She remembered the smiling Senator she had seen on television, the crowded ballroom. Ted looked more like— She rejected the unexpected romantic image, fading.
The Mayor cleared his throat. “Now, Normalyn, I asked you here for the obvious pleashuh of your company, but also to discuss some important matters. Nothin’ complicated.” He banished secrecy by extending his look to the others there. “I am, of course, the executor of your dear mother’s estate. She was real careful in her instructions. Said she left careful ones for you, too.” His eyes on her added emphasis.