Love,
Miss TragiComic Texas
W
ith 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.
I
T 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 talking,
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?”
“No. Just come on over when you’re ready. I’ll be here,” he said.