Lone Star Legend

by Gwendolyn Zepeda

  “Is your new Web site going to be for Latinas?” her mother asked.

  “Sort of,” Sandy answered, keeping her tone vague. Nacho Papi would be like Levy Media’s other new sites, Don’t Call Me Sassy and Banana Nation. Sandy hadn’t examined those sites in depth yet, but she could already tell that they’d follow the lead of Levy Media’s flagship “news” site, Hate-O-Rama.com, where celebrities, politicians, and media professionals got the “hater” treatment on a daily basis. She didn’t feel like trying to explain the ironic, irreverent, mean-spirited-but-funny tone to her mother, for whom Mujer magazine and the occasional romance novel were the highest-level reading.

  Having finished the last bite of her quesadilla and washed it down with the pink saccharine juice, Sandy stood. “All right, Mom. I’d better go upstairs. I have a lot of work to finish.”

  “Work? Baby, it’s Friday. You’re young. Why aren’t you going out tonight?”

  Enough of the third degree, Sandy thought. It was time to resort to a dirty trick to get her mother off her back. “Speaking of going out, who was that I heard at your door last night?” she asked.

  Immediately, like magic, her mother clammed up. “Never mind,” she said primly.

  Sandy smiled. She may have been secretive, but she came by the trait honestly. Her mother could be quite the secret keeper herself when she wanted to be. Sandy knew Mrs. Saavedra was probably dating someone, but that was all she knew, because that was all her mom would let her find out.

  They cleaned up the snack debris in relative silence and then Sandy turned to go.

  “Wait, Sandy, I forgot to ask you: Can you still go with me to Aunt Linda’s house tomorrow? Remember, I told you last week?”

  Sandy hadn’t remembered, actually. She’d completely forgotten until that moment that she’d half promised to help her mother clean her recently deceased aunt’s house and finish putting the old woman’s affairs in order. That meant a long drive out to the dusty, hilly middle of nowhere. Not exactly how she wanted to spend half her weekend.

  She wanted to make up an excuse. She had the perfect excuse—she had her Nacho Papi audition posts to write. But her mother was looking at her so hopefully that Sandy decided to give in. She could write the posts after, she told herself.

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” Sandy said, feeling relieved at having something else to do, all of a sudden.

  She ignored the fact that the relief only barely covered an underlying, slow-simmering sense of panic about her career.

  7

  Blog entry from My Modern TragiComedy, Saturday, March 11

  I love my mother, but

  sometimes she drives me crazy. I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling.

  In my particular case, it’s like my mother and I are complete opposites. The way we act, the way we dress, the things we watch, listen to, and read (or don’t read)… Everything about us is different.

  I take after my dad. Which is strange, when you think about it, because that means he married someone completely different from him. I wonder, sometimes, if those differences are why they divorced.

  And I wonder, sometimes, if he’s ever realized how much he and I are alike.

  Maybe that’s why he left me to deal with my mother—as a sort of substitute for himself, when he couldn’t handle it anymore?

  Okay, sorry to get so deep there…. I’ve already written tons of angsty stuff here about their divorce and all the trauma it caused me. Thanks again, guys, for reading this site and saving me the therapist fees.

  I’m overanalyzing, I guess, because I’m about to take a road trip with my mom to deal with some somber family issues. And what better time than a road trip to hash out your differences with someone, right?

  Wrong. I intend to keep the conversation light and the radio on, all the way.

  Love,

  Miss TragiComic Texas

  8

  With her right hand, Sandy steered her mother’s Lincoln Town Car south, down a quiet two-lane highway. With her left, she drank an iced chai latte, as quickly as possible, in order to infuse her brain with the caffeine it needed in order to cope with Mrs. Saavedra’s constant chatter.

  “I told Aunt Ruby we’d go over there and see what needed doing. Put away the last of Linda’s things, clean out the cupboards, make sure there aren’t any important papers still lying around. It’s the least we can do, you know, since we didn’t even go to the funeral.” Her mother heaved a guilty-sounding sigh.

  “Mom, it was in California. They didn’t expect us to fly over. We barely knew Aunt Linda, anyway. It’s not like if you or I died, we’d get mad at them for not showing up at our funerals.”

  “Jesus Mother Mary, Sandy. Bite your tongue!”

  Despite the macabre theme of the day, a fresh breeze blew through the window and perked Sandy up a bit. The drive would take an hour and fifteen minutes, assuming they didn’t get lost. Sandy had been to her great-aunt’s ranch house only a few times before, as a girl, and her mother wasn’t good with directions. She’d mapped the location online and printed the results, but that gave her a piece of paper with much more white space than ink.

  Her mother narrated the trip to one of her friends via cell phone. “We’re on a little road trip, just like Thelma and Louise. Sandy took me to one of her coffee places. I thought we were going to Starbucks but no, she took me somewhere special. I’ll have to show it to you, if I can remember how to get there on my own. Sandy knows the neatest little places. Uh-huh, closer to San Antonio. I know, it’s so sad. No, we never did. We didn’t even know she was sick until she went to stay with my aunt Ruby. No, that’s how it always goes. Yes, I-35 South, until we get to some exit. I forget which one. Sandy knows. No, not yet. I don’t know. She won’t let me ask her anything. You know how they get. Hmm? Two years now. No, they don’t live together. He still lives at the university. His family? I think they’re from Atlanta. Is that right, Sandy? Are Daniel’s parents in Atlanta?”

  “Mom,” Sandy said, putting the warning note into her voice.

  “Oh, okay. Sorry. See, she won’t say. You know how kids are. Right. Oh, really? Okay, then. Bye, Tina. I’ll call you later.”

  Well outside Austin’s city limits, the landscape changed completely and had a sort of hypnotic effect on Sandy’s mother. She stopped fishing for information and simply stared out the window at the hills and twisty trees and the occasional slivers of slow-flowing brown river. When she did speak, it was only exclamations about their surroundings, or else one-sentence regrets about the funeral.

  Sandy concentrated on the road, on finding signs and the few landmarks she’d been able to glean from the online satellite map. She’d brought her camera along, but there was nothing worth photographing so far. Just endless cedar and mesquite trees and low hills cut by the highway. The sky seemed bigger down here somehow. But Sandy knew from experience that you couldn’t photograph the bigness of the Texas sky. It simply wouldn’t translate into pixels. Every few miles, wooden crosses and fake flowers left on the roadside would mark the site of someone’s misfortune. Sandy hugged each curve and kept her eyes on the road.

  IT TOOK LESS time than Sandy had calculated to reach the neighborhood, but much longer than she’d expected to find the actual house. They were on a numbered ranch road, in the middle of a mostly rural county. Not even in a town, technically. Aunt Linda’s “neighborhood” was actually a string of goat pastures and newly plowed fields, separated at intervals by long gravel driveways that led to small, colorless houses. There was no way of knowing the street address of any of them. Sandy finally picked the most inhabited-looking one, nearest the star on her map, and drove up its rocky drive to ask for directions.

  As they neared the grayish wooden house, an old man walked out from behind it to meet them. He wore a plaid shirt, jeans so faded they were almost white, and a tan straw hat.

  “Oh, I think that’s her neighbor. I forget his name. I didn’t know he still lived here…. You’d better let me do the talk
ing, Sandy.” Her mother sounded apprehensive, and Sandy knew it was because she was about to speak Spanish, something she wasn’t very good at. But she was better at it than her daughter, so Sandy let her take the lead.

  They emerged from the Town Car as the old man waited and watched. Sandy’s mother, in her usual weekend wear—bright top, tight capri pants, metallic sandals, full makeup, and big gold earrings—stumbled a little on the gravel. “Hola,” she called to the old man as she hobbled her way toward him. “Como estás? Buscamos la casa que éra de mi tía Linda Hernández.”

  “Linda’s house, sure. It’s next door.” The old man pointed in the direction they’d just driven from. “You’re her nieces? I remember you. Did y’all drive here from Austin?”

  “Yes.” Sandy’s mother lifted her chin a little and stopped where she stood, seemingly indignant at having displayed her rusty Spanish for nothing.

  “It’s easier to walk over,” the old man said. He moved toward the steps as if to enter his own house. “Do you have the keys? If not, we can use mine.”

  “No, we have a key.” Sandy’s mother was taken off guard. So was Sandy. Aunt Ruby had given them the impression that Aunt Linda’s house was completely abandoned, exposed to vandals, raccoons, and maybe even evil spirits.

  The old man led them across gravel and grass to a group of trees that must have been hiding Aunt Linda’s house from view. “I’m Jaime Escobar, but you can call me Tío Jaime. Everybody does.”

  “I remember you now. I’m Connie Saavedra, and this is my daughter, Sandy.”

  “Oh, Connie and Sandy. Right. Linda talked about you.” The man everyone called Tío Jaime turned to Sandy. “You’re the writer, aren’t you?”

  Now Sandy was even more surprised. “Yes, I am.” She wouldn’t have guessed that her writing career had made it that far down the family grapevine.

  There was a bark in the distance and then, almost before the bark had finished echoing in Sandy’s head, a scraggly, patchy dog ran up to the old man’s side and stopped on a dime, panting, before falling in step between them. Sandy’s mother inhaled audibly and tensed up. She didn’t like dogs.

  “Cano,” the old man said, snapping his fingers on the left, causing the dog to immediately jump to his other side and away from Mrs. Saavedra. “Don’t worry about him. He won’t bother you.”

  “Oh,” was all Sandy’s mother could say.

  The party slipped through two short, bushy trees and, sure enough, just on the other side was a house that looked exactly like the old man’s. It was another little gray cube of wooden planks with no paint left to peel. Although it was obviously uninhabited now, it didn’t look as bleak as Sandy had expected. There was a pot of begonias on the porch and a striped cat sauntered through the yard. The cat and Tío Jaime’s dog gazed at each other for a moment, then went back to their own doings.

  The dog waited at the door while Sandy, her mother, and their escort entered the little house. Inside, everything was incredibly clean and smelled like pine and lemons. In the front room there was a dark wood desk, a dinette set, a TV stand, and several chairs, all of which seemed three-quarters the size of modern furniture, and all of which had been polished. The sofa, a camel-backed affair, was covered with a bleached white sheet. Pink calico curtains hung from the windows and had been pulled back to let the sun shine onto gleaming white walls and dark molding.

  Tío Jaime led them past the small kitchen, all flowered white tile, which also gleamed, and into the house’s only other major room, Aunt Linda’s bedroom. Again, everything was immaculate. The full-sized bed was the biggest thing in the room, its mattress wrapped tightly in a pink and lilac quilt. There was a dresser and another little chair. The closet door stood open and emitted the scents of ammonia and lavender. There was nothing hanging from the rod, but Sandy could see several neatly taped boxes on its floor. There were smaller boxes and bundles on the bed.

  “Those are all her clothes, in the closet,” said Tío Jaime. “Here are her papers.” He indicated a black box on the bed. “And this one is her jewelry and things… hair clips and the things that were still good. All the kitchen things are over there.”

  “Who did all this?” Sandy’s mother asked.

  “Linda did, most of it. Right before she went to her sister’s in California. After she left, I just picked up a few loose ends and kept an eye on the place for her.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Saavedra. Sandy waited for her to ask something else. She could tell by the way her mother looked around with narrowed eyes that she wanted to ask more questions, such as how much time Tío Jaime spent in this house and just how friendly he and Aunt Linda had been. But some miracle of unexpected tact had settled on her and, instead, Mrs. Saavedra simply let out a relieved-sounding sigh. “Thank you. We were going to… Thank you so much, Mr. Esco—Mr…. Jaime.”

  Tío Jaime nodded and waved her thanks away. “I’m thinking you want to take the box of papers, at least, and maybe whatever else will fit in your Town Car?”

  Mrs. Saavedra looked around helplessly. Obviously she’d expected to do much more to the house before reaching the stage of deciding what to take back with them. Now, with all the work done, she was at a loss. “What do you think, Sandy? The papers, for sure…”

  “Let’s just take the papers and then call Aunt Ruby and see what we’re supposed to do with the rest.”

  Without a word, Tío Jaime went to the bed and picked up the black box, stacking a smaller box on top of it. “Take her jewelry, too. I know she would have wanted you to. I’ll carry these back to your car for you. Come get me if you need help carrying anything else.” With that, he left them alone in the house.

  Her mother was already fidgeting, either from discomfort or boredom or both. Sandy didn’t blame her. Obviously this Tío Jaime had everything here under control, unbeknownst to Aunt Ruby. There was nothing more for Sandy and her mother to do, and there was nothing more for them to see.

  Sandy looked around the house again and tried to imagine her great-aunt, whom she remembered only as a petite, gray-haired woman who liked to crochet dishtowels, living there alone. It was unthinkable. There was nothing here—no computer, no satellite dish, no shopping for miles around. Unless Aunt Linda had been having a torrid affair with Tío Jaime, there was absolutely no way Sandy could imagine her filling her days here. And even if they had been dating, or whatever elderly people did together, it couldn’t have been enough to fill years on end out in the middle of nowhere.

  After deciding to leave everything else as it was, Sandy and her mother walked back to Tío Jaime’s yard and accepted his offer to have a drink.

  Inside his house, which was even more sparsely furnished than Aunt Linda’s, they sat at a tall square table in the kitchen and drank strong, sweet lemonade. Tío Jaime put out a plate of assorted Mexican cookies, and Mrs. Saavedra politely accepted a chocolate one.

  “Did you know my aunt well?” she finally asked, as casually as she could.

  Tío Jaime took a strawberry wafer off the plate and said, “We’ve been neighbors all our lives.”

  “Oh, really?” Mrs. Saavedra looked wary then, as if it had just occurred to her that this man might be untrustworthy, or senile.

  “First in Del Rio, then here,” Tío Jaime added.

  “Oh!” my mother said. “So you grew up together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you… were you at the funeral?”

  “No,” he said. “Was it nice?”

  “Oh, we don’t know. We couldn’t make it.”

  “Me neither. Wish I had.” And that was all Tío Jaime said. He didn’t seem rude or secretive. He was just a man who didn’t waste words. Sandy had gotten that sense right off the bat, and found herself admiring him for it.

  Her mother finally realized it, too. She visibly shook off her moment of discomfort and filled the silence with her own chatter. “Well, Sandy, I don’t know what’s left for us to do. Mr.—Tío Jaime—already did everything for us. Thank you
again, Tío Jaime. You took a load off my mind. I didn’t even know where we were going to start. Well, I guess we’ll just take Aunt Linda’s papers, then, and come back later for…” She paused there and looked to Sandy, as if she had a piece of a puzzle. “Everything else? Or…” She turned back to Tío Jaime. “Did you want any of the—I mean, is there something I can give you for… I mean…”

  Tío Jaime shook his head. “She gave me a few things before she left. The rest, she said, was for whoever in the family came to pick it up.”

  He fell silent again. Through the open window the breeze picked up a little. On a rug nearby the dog sighed in his sleep. Sandy got the sense that it might have been sort of insulting for her mother to offer this man payment or a keepsake for his services. It was almost, she started to realize, inappropriate for Sandy and her mother to be here. They’d hardly known Aunt Linda, after all. They obviously hadn’t known her as well as Tío Jaime had.

  Sandy peered at him over her lemonade glass. His face was politely expressionless. But who knew? Maybe he was hiding extreme grief.

  “Mom, we need to head back now.” Sandy stood and put out her hand. “Tío Jaime, thanks for everything you’ve done. I know Aunt Linda’s family in California will be grateful to you, too.”

  Her mother followed Sandy’s lead, getting up and shaking Tío Jaime’s hand in turn. “Yes, thank you, Tío Jaime.”

  “It was nothing,” he said. “Y’all come back just as soon as you’re ready and I’ll be here to help.”

  “Do you…” Sandy struggled to think up the protocol for this situation. “Do you want us to call ahead before we come back?”