New Mexico held me in a nostalgic grip, even though I had never been there. Only after we’d spent six hours crossing it before arriving in El Paso did I realize what was affecting me. It was that southern New Mexico was beginning to look, feel, and taste like Texas. Northern New Mexico was comparatively a rain forest; it looked as if an extremely choosy nutrient were coursing underground. Rocks burst with color. Rainbow striations shot across the walls of mesas, then disappeared into the ground. Dusky green succulents vividly dotted the tan hills, and the occasional saguaro stood in the distance with its hand raised in peace like a planetary alien.
But southern New Mexico was arid, eroded, and flat. As we drove, Clarissa liked to turn off the air-conditioning, roll down the window, and be dust-blown. I was beginning to sunburn on the right side of my face, and we screamed a conversation over the wind that ripped through the car. She told me that her bank account was being depleted fast, that she was worried she would have to quit school, thus ruining her chances of ultimately achieving a higher income. She said she was concerned that she would have to move back to Boston per her ex’s demand, and she didn’t understand why her ex even cared about whether they were in Boston as he seldom exhibited any interest in Teddy. All this bad news was delivered without self-pity, as if it were just fact, and I felt a strong urge to cushion her fall as her life was collapsing. But I lacked any ideas to support her except cheerleading. I suppose I could have been a moral voice, but I was beginning to doubt my status in that department, too.
Our conversation reminded me that I was also in financial trouble. Granny’s intuition had saved me many times, but that form of rescue was now over. I wondered if my pretense of having no need of money, to myself and to Granny, was childish. My paltry government check was insufficient to support my grand-compared to some-lifestyle. I knew that without Granny’s occasional rain of money, there was going to be, upon my return to Santa Monica, a housing, clothing, and food crisis.
In El Paso we found a Jimmy Crack Corn motel that fit within my new scaled-down notion of budget. I joked, “Discomfort is our byword.” To her credit Clarissa laughed and agreed. We stayed in separate rooms as we sensed a wretched bathroom situation, and we were right. Barely enough room for the knees.
The motel had made one attempt at landscaping, a ramshackle wooden walkway arcing over a concrete-bottomed pond. However disgusting it was for Clarissa and me to look into its murk, Teddy considered it Lake Geneva; he wanted to swim, frolic, water ski, and sail in its green sludge. We wouldn’t let him come in contact with the mossy soup, so dense that it left a green ring around the edge of the concrete, but I did make paper boats that Teddy was allowed to throw stones at and sink.
In the morning, Clarissa’s shower woke me and I could time my ablutions to hers thanks to the paper-thin walls. We cleaned our teeth, peed, and washed simultaneously, enabling me to appear outside my door at the same time she appeared outside hers, and by 7 A.M., with Teddy already lulled into a stupor by the motion of the car, we were on the final stretch to Helmut, Texas.
What happened under the pecan tree qualifies as one of those events in life that is as small as an atom but with nuclear implications.
Clarissa and I had checked into a local motel, just a short hop from Granny’s, that practically straddled the Llano River. It was set in a gnarly copse of juniper trees whose branches had woven themselves into a canopy that threw a wide net of shade. We were lucky to have found a low-cost paradise that had a number of natural amusements for Teddy, including nut-finding, water-squatting, and leaf-eating, and it was easy to idle away a few hours in the morning while we laboriously digested our manly Texas breakfasts.
Before lunch, Clarissa drove me to Granny’s. I had no recollection of how to get there, though a few landmarks-the broadside of a white barn, a derelict gas pump, a cattle grate-did jog my memory. But when we left the highway and drove among the pecan groves whose trees overhung the road to the farm, I experienced an unbroken wave of familiarity. The trees grew in height and density as we neared the farmhouse, which was sheltered by a dozen more trees towering 150 feet in the air, protecting it from the coming summer heat. The house was a single-story hacienda, wrapped around a massive pecan tree that stood in the middle of a courtyard. The exterior walls were bleached adobe and the roof-line was studded with wooden vigas. A long porch with mesquite supports, sagging with age, ran the length of the house on three sides, and a horse and goat were tied up near a water trough. The trees overhead were so dense that sunlight only dappled the house even at this moment of high noon. A few rough-hewn benches were situated among the trees. Attached to the house was a ramada woven with climbing plants, at the end of which a tiled Mexican fountain flowed with gurgling water, completing this picture of serenity.
There were three cars parked outside, two were dilapidated agricultural trucks and one a dusty black Mercedes. We pulled up and got out. A man in a tan suit swung open the screen door. He held a slim leather portfolio that indicated he was official. He said hello to us with a relaxed voice and we heard the first southern drawl of the entire trip. We introduced ourselves and when I said I was “Dan, grandson of Granny,” there was a frozen moment followed by, “Oh yes, we’ve been looking for you.”
Clarissa went off to the fountain to show Teddy its delights. I went into the farmhouse with Morton Dean Argus, who turned out to be the lawyer for the estate. He explained he had driven all the way from San Antonio and had stayed here on the farm for the last three days to sort out issues among the few relatives who had arrived in pickup trucks after the news got out. “Y’all arrive a half hour later and I would-of been gone,” he said.
Everything useful in the house had been sacked. Everything personal remained. Antique family photos still hung on the walls, but the microwave oven had been removed. The stove, a 1930 Magic Chef Range, was too ancient to loot, the marauders having no idea of its value to the right aesthete chef. A cedar chest filled with Indian rugs had been mysteriously overlooked. There were the occasional goodies, including period equestrian tack used as wall decor, as well as a small collection of heavy clay curios of sleeping Mexicans, whose original bright colors had patinated to soft pastels.
Morton Argus told me that Granny had been cremated and interred on the property under a tree of her designation. He told me that a one-page will had been read and that certain items-really merchandise-had been distributed to a few workers and relatives. My sister, Ida, had been there, he said, and I felt a pang of guilt that my sequestered lifestyle hadn’t allowed her to contact me more quickly so I could have met her at the house. It was Ida, he said, who coordinated the dispersal of furniture to a small swarm of needy relatives.
Ida was three years younger than me. She’d moved to Dallas, married young, and borne children, and she seemed untouched by the impulses that took me inside myself. “Did my dad show up?” I said. Morton asked me his name. “Jack,” I said. No, he hadn’t.
Accompanied by Morton, I nosed through the house and came into a room piled with cardboard boxes and empty picture frames. An oval mirror leaned precariously against the floor. Four wooden kitchen chairs were alternately inverted and nested on each other.
“Anything you want in here?” asked Morton.
“I’ll look,” I said.
Morton excused himself, saying he had to sort out some papers. I knelt down and browsed through a couple of boxes. At the bottom of one I found a metal container the size of a shoe box. It had a built-in lock but the key was long gone. I thought it would take a screwdriver to bust it open, but I gave it an extra tug and it had enough give to tell me it had only rusted shut. A little prying and the lid popped up. Inside were a bundle of letters, all addressed to Granny, all postmarked in the late ’70s. Two of them had return addresses with the hand-printed initials J.C. They were from my father. I picked up the box, knowing that this would be the only thing I would take from the house.